A Reality TV Show for Writers

With all the crappy reality shows on television it is only a matter of time before we writers get one of our own.  It would make sense, too.  A show that is supposedly unscripted about a group of people who script shit. 

And let's face it--we writers are a bunch of nutcases, drama queens, psychopaths, miscreants, anti-social misfits, drug addicts and drunks.  Some of us are so high-strung we don't need coffee but drink it as if our heart rate depends upon it anyways. 

Writers are not normal.  This is why we would make a perfect reality show. 

For a while there was a show called Top Artist or something like that.  It was a bunch of artists given challenges.  Everything they made looked like shit thrown together by a strong wind.  I've seen tornadoes make better art.  Every single week it was a driftwood sculpture and a couple of blurry black and white photographs.  If something that stupid can get turned into a reality show, then why not a group with more quirks than a Zooey Deschanel fan club? 

The format would be simple.  Since these shows aren't about producing good work but rather making people who are totally different work together on projects that don't need teamwork, this would be very easy. 

Every week a novel gets written.  Each writer would have to write a chapter.  The characters, plot and other basic settings would be assigned by the cute host with the vacant stare.  And some guest judge would come in and add a stipulation. 

"This week's novel is a detective comedy about a lesbian Inuit quadriplegic living in New Orleans.  But our Guest for the Week, Joe R. Lansdale, is here to give a special twist."

And then Mr. Lansdale would step up and say, in that wonderful East Texan accent, "Writers!  This novel is now steampunk!"

Someplace in the group of writers, a pudgy guy in glasses would hiss, "Yes!"

The projects, whatever they might be, would all be a vehicle for multicultural and liberal views.  Any conservative, or blond-haired, characters would automatically be villains.

First, each episode would begin with a thirty-minute quick-fire poetry challenge.  It would be Nuyorican slam poetry in iambic pentameter.  That winner would get to write either the first or last chapter.

Then, the judging would begin for the previous week's project.  That week's submissions would have been online all week for the audience to read.  This way, when the judges made cruel and demeaning statements while the writers acted insane, the audience would know what they were talking about.

Then, in the final part of the show, the writers (minus the one booted off the show) would get their assignments for the next project.  

Of course, there would be all kinds of confessional interviews with the writers, where they talked shit about each other and shed light on their personality disorders. 

There would be one jittery, nervous-looking woman who begins every sentence with, "As a vegan, I feel that..."

The Soccer Mom writer would then confess she was a closet bi-sexual and secretly fantasizes about one of the other female writers. 

The writer that claimed to be a lesbian would be the hottest woman on the show.

And then some twenty-something pre-op tranny from New York would have a nervous breakdown from the stress of writing a sex scene full of metaphors about being oppressed and silenced by society. 

The hunky boy-toy would somehow find a way to take off his shirt and flex in each episode.  

For the sake of art, I volunteer to be the redneck horror writer.  It's a stretch, but I'm pretty sure I could pull that off, for the right amount of money. 

The winner of the show gets a three-book deal with a major publisher, including a film deal, and an endorsement contract for anti-depression medication. 

I can already smell the Emmy!