English Majors Share How They Broke Into Television, Journalism

(Left to right) A moderator (whose name I forgot to get - oops!) led  a panel discussion
with writers and fellow Ohio State alumni Mac McClelland, Douglas Watson,
Shari Goldhagen and Mike Alber.

One of the highlights of the fall for me was participating in a recent event at my alma mater, The Ohio State University, that brought together alumni from all over the country who majored in English.

The Alumni Writers' Extraganza was held Oct. 2-4 at various locations in my hometown of Columbus. Several of the free workshops took place in Denney Hall, the building on Ohio State's main campus where we English majors spent countless hours.

One of the most interesting workshops was "Breaking into TV." Television writers Mike Alber, Sage Boggs and Bryan Wynbrandt shared how they use the MFAs in English that they earned from Ohio State in their daily work.

Boggs, who works for "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon," said joining a comedy troupe while at Ohio State helped him develop his creative voice.

"I was writing sketches with a small group of people here on campus. That was a good opportunity, because we'd perform every year at a festival in New York," which enabled him to make contacts that eventually led to jobs in television, Boggs said.

Wynbrandt, who has written for CBS's "Hawaii Five-O" and Fox's "Alcatraz," said participating in creative writing workshops at Ohio State prepared him for working in television writers' rooms where everyone critiques each other's work.

"There's no better experience than being in those workshops here [at Ohio State]," Wynbrandt said.

Alber co-created, co-produces and co-writes the Disney Channel sitcom "Kirby Buckets." Alber shared that he and writing partner Gabe Snyder broke into television by watching and studying dozens of movies and television shows, and by writing screenplays and entering them into contests.

One of Alber and Snyder's screenplays attracted the attention of a producer who offered them an opportunity to write for an MTV show in 2010 when Alber was still finishing up his MFA. One gig led to another, enabling Alber and Snyder to build careers as working writers in Los Angeles, where they eventually relocated.

"There was no one big leap; there was little, tiny, incremental changes" that led to a series of opportunities, Alber said. "Little things sort of built on each other."

Alber also participated in another workshop during the Ohio State alumni weekend in which writers shared what they've done with their MFA degrees other than become English professors.

Alber said having a master's degree in creative writing didn't necessarily open any doors in television. But having a degree, on top of all the work he did on his own of analyzing how screenplays and teleplays are structured, gave him a competitive advantage in writing for television.

"Once I did it for awhile, I [realized], 'I can do this. This is a job I can do,'" Alber said.

Author and freelance journalist Mac McClelland said having to teach classes while earning her MFA helped her realize early on that she didn't want to teach for a living. Now a full-time freelancer for publications such as The New York Times, McClelland said staying on top of the business end of her work is as important as the writing itself.

McClelland said she has learned to negotiate her rate with publications: "I'll say, 'I won't work for less than this,'" and she often gets what she asks for.

Authors Shari Goldhagen and Douglas Watson spoke about the challenges of finding time to write fiction with the demands of full-time journalism careers.

Goldhagen, who lives in New York, said having a concrete, looming deadline is helpful both in the journalism assignments she accepts and in her own creative writing.

When Goldhagen was approached by a publisher to write an installment in a young-adult novel series, "I finished... in six weeks. I would just get up really early to do it [because of the publisher's deadline]."

Watson, a copy editor for Time Magazine, said his journalism career and creative writing complement each other.

"I enjoy having a shift job. ... The weekly schedule gives me a three-day weekend. I do my fiction writing then," he said. "There's something malleable about time. You can get a lot dine in a little bit of time if you're determined."