How to Become a Daily Show Writer

Video Transcript

"Hi this is Laura Turner and today I'm going to talk with you about how to become a daily show writer. You love watching the Daily Show, and you watch it everyday, because it's the daily show. Not really. But if you want to become a writer for the Daily Show, you should first become the best writer that you can be for TV. Because, very obviously, TV writing positions are very coveted, and very competitive. So what you're going to want to do first is really figure out how to write comedy for TV and how really to write sketch comedy well. You might want to go take classes at your local university to work on this. You might want to get a book that will help you sort of work on it on you own. But what you really want to do is make sure that you test yourself, that you actually get your work into the hands of actors that are going to be speaking it. And then you also want to think about, you know, do you work well with other people? Writing for the Daily Show, you're not just going to be writing by yourself, you're going to be working with many of the people who are writing sometimes on the same exact sketch that you're writing on. So you need to decide, will I be able to sort of give up some of my power and to write with other people on the same thing. Or am I just not that kind of a writer. So really think about, you know, do you fit into TV or not. And then, you know, you can actually join the writer's guild of America, you can sort of start to build up your portfolio and your resume in this way. You know, move to New York, and really try to break into writing. And maybe eventually you'll get that job with the Daily Show."