Shonda Rhimes Quotes

There's a way in which filmmaking is a director's medium and television is a writer's medium, so even as TV gets more cinematic, it's still guided by the writer.

You can be far more challenging, articulate and intelligent writing for television than you can writing for the cinema.

I read every draft of every episode of every series produced at FX.

When I write a screenplay - and I think this is true for a lot of people - you direct the movie. That's what writing a screenplay is.

TV is a writer's medium.

When you're a writer on a show, your job is to write in the show runner's voice, really.

For sure, without question, the writing is better on TV pound for pound than movies because the businesses have changed so much. So all the great writers would rather work for TV, and they do.

In the TV world, we are seeing a lot more power going to the writer. I sense it is a writer's medium.

Coming up in the School of Aaron Sorkin Delivery of Fast-Paced Dialogue and Hyper-Articulateness prepared me well for Shondaland, where there are many of the same factors at play.

In television, the 60-minute series, 'The Wire' and 'Mad Men' and so on, the writer is the primary creative artist.

Matthew Wiener on 'Mad Men' writes the entire series before they start shooting, and if you have that, then what you can do with character and story is not at all unlike what you can do in a novel.

The best thing as a director is being able to be part of the thing that's so cool about a TV show, like running a character arc over six episodes or multiple series.

For screenwriting, when you're writing, you're talking to hundreds - hundreds of people who might be interpreting what you're saying. When you're writing a comic book, you're really only talking to the artist.

For a writer, working in television is an incredibly rewarding medium. You're in charge of all aspects of production and get to see your vision come to life every week.

Honestly, the life of a serial character on television, I'd love to write an essay about it.

Typically on a TV series, the writers on a show are writing for their life almost every episode. When someone sits down to write a Netflix show, they know there's going to be a 13th hour.

Something I've really been wanting to do, ever since 'Six Feet Under' ended, was create my own version of this idealized writer's room as well as the ideal family.

In order to have a TV series, you have to have a good idea for the story.

Writing a TV show is totally different than writing features, or just, what I started doing is writing features. You write a little bit more organically. You start from the beginning to the end, beginning, middle and end.

Oh, I had an idea for a pilot of my own at the time, and then Carl sent me about eight scripts and simply I threw my idea out the window because the writing was just so good.

It's fun to improvise, but I still think it's better to have a great script, you know, like a Charlie Kaufman script.

The great thing about film is you start and finish. It's a journey that lasts so long, TV lasts a long time.

Writing for a soap - writing for 25 characters day in, day out - is one of the most difficult jobs in Hollywood.

Taking a comic strip character is very hard to write. Because comics are meant to work in one page, to work in frames with minimalistic dialogue. And a lot of it is left to the imagination of the reader. To do that in film, you've got to be a little more explanatory. And that requires a good screenplay and good dialogue.

I have a pretty big TV background, and I have clocked so many hours in so many writers' rooms over the years.