Splitsider

She's so much more than Pete's sleepy wife on 30 Rock! SNL writer Paula Pell has been named one of Variety's Screenwriters to Watch. She's done punch-up work on Bridesmaids and Judd Apatow's upcoming This Is Forty, so she's already basically the silent ninja of screenwriting, and next year Tina Fey will produce Pell's own script based on her teenage journals.

Lauryn Kahn was also named a writer to watch, no surprise after selling a script to Adam McKay from her assistant's chair. And so was Jay Baruchel and his writing partner Jesse Cabot for their work on Goon and the upcoming Baseballissimo, which [...]

So you love Community, not just because it's funny but because it's impressively written. It seems each half-hour episode packs in a movie's worth of story: spending time on all 8 characters, taking them on a journey away from their study group and back, hitting a joke in each line and then along the way throwing in a parody of a deleted scene from The Terminator that you thought only you saw.

In addition to that, Community jumps genres from episode to episode — one week it's zombies, the next it's a note-perfect parody of The Right Stuff or the ridiculously intricate paintball/28 Days Later episode from season one. [...]

The Nerdist Writers Panel on TV Writing, featuring panelists Community's Dan Harmon, The Middle Man's Javier Grillo Marxuach, and The Good Guys' Aaron Ginsburg and Wade McIntyre, is both reassuring (writing for dating reality shows for 7 years!) and barf-inducing (selling your first script ever to Robert Zemeckis!), as the writers discuss their breakthrough jobs, the value of networking vs. having a quality spec, and the thrilling conclusion of Seaquest.

"It's always banana peels and stop lights, as I put it. It's just, like, a series of random events. The only thing you can do is be persistent about it," Harmon explains, reassuring the audience that working [...]

The Thomas Lennon and Ben Garant episode of Life After Film School is available on Hulu, along with many other excellent screenwriter interviews that will be eating your free time this weekend. The pair lays down some serious screenwriting wisdom in between reminiscing about costumes taken from Moulin Rouge, Teddy Roosevelt quotes and the eye patch Lennon wore after getting beaten "almost to death" while in film school. A few gems they share about their process includes: