 
Hello Sunday Wrap readers, Our Trade Secrets series — deeply reported features designed to help you navigate how Hollywood really works — continued this week with a look at TV writers' rooms. We asked 14 showrunners all of our burning questions: How do they build their staff? How often are writers on set? Are they valuing diversity? And can you still work your way up from assistant? The result is a comprehensive and eye-opening guide to the modern writers' room by our Loree Seitz. Adam Chitwood Trade Secrets: 14 showrunners spill the details of assembling their writers and offer advice on how to make an impression By Loree Seitz 
For aspiring TV writers, the dream of selling a series goes hand-in-hand with landing a spot in the writers’ room of a popular show under the direction of a high-profile showrunner. A writers’ room serves as the creative engine of the show, but it also acts as a pipeline for up-and-coming talent. These kinds of positions led to the rise of acclaimed TV creators such as Larry David, Quinta Brunson, Judd Apatow, Tina Fey, Seth Rogen and Liz Meriwether, among many others. While the 22-episode orders of the broadcast TV era would employ roughly a dozen or more writers in years past, like everything in the biz, writers’ rooms have transformed with the rise of streaming. The result has been smaller staffs, meaning fewer opportunities for new writers and shorter writing periods for those who can get in the room. The days when TV writers could live on staffing one show per year are gone. “The little ways that you used to make your year are going away,” “Going Dutch” showrunner Joel Church-Cooper told TheWrap. “Every writers’ room spot is precious now … especially in comedy writers’ rooms, because there’s just not that many of them.” The lack of openings is why... 
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