Late Night Writing Advice

with writer and comedian, Jonathan Giles

Hey, hey! It’s Ryan, again! I really appreciate you for reading this! Don’t miss the next one. Subscribe!

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This week, I am so lucky to have my first “guest” of the newsletter!

He’s a hilarious writer, stand-up comedian and friend from Los Angeles. He was in the NBCUniversal Late Night Writers Workshop which took only one try! He said it’s weird telling people that because he’s the first person to ever do it. I don’t feel weird about it…the dude’s good. He was also a writer on the first season of A Little Late With Lilly Singh and put out a half hour of stand-up and an awesome web series both called I’m Trying. I INSIST you go check those out. During the pandemic times we Zoomed and I asked him for three pieces of increasingly specific advice on how to write for late night in a new segment I’m calling CAN YOU BE MORE SPECIFIC?

Please welcome…JONATHAN GILES!!!

Can You Be More Specific? with Jonathan Giles

Increasingly specific advice on writing for late night:

1. Watch late night.

JG: Watch it. If you love it, keep watching it. Understand what different hosts like to do. If you really love the vibe of Jimmy Fallon and the show, understand what Jimmy Fallon does. If you like Colbert, understand what he does. If you like Seth, understand what he does. And there are a lot of new shows too, which is really cool. Like you got Desus & Mero, obviously Lilly, Amber Ruffin’s show is amazing. I love her show because you can tell Amber is a writer. She worked on Seth’s show so much, but also the feel and the vibe of her show feels like I'm watching Sesame Street…You can tell that if the writers laughed at it in the room, even if it was silly, they were like “it’s going in the show.”

Figure out what your vibe is, and write in that voice. Kinda know what show you want to write for and work on.

2. Practice writing.

JG: There's a lot of ways to sort of exercise your brain whether you want to write for a show or if you want to be the host for a show. People do online shows. You can find YouTube late night hosts, and ask if you can submit jokes for them. Most of those people will gladly say “yes”. Maybe you and some friends want to put a show together. And COVID makes things really weird right now, but if you want to create your own show and just record it yourself and do it once a week or once a month, like time doesn't matter. It's really up to you. That's the cool thing about when you're writing for yourself. You get to decide how you want to do it. But yeah, start writing it and putting it out there, whether you're the face or you're behind the scenes writing for someone else.

RS: That’s great, because a lot of people put barriers up for themselves. Where it's just like, “Oh, well, I want to write for late night. So I'm just gonna try to position myself to do it.” And it's like, just start practicing it. Just start writing the jokes. Put them into the world in some way, whatever way it is.

JG: Right before I moved out here, there was a late night, SNL-type show that we ran in Chicago. By we, I mean, Second City. I came out of the class, and the director of that class actually asked me if I was interested in being the head writer. So I did it. I got to get that experience right before I got here. Reading sketches and punching sketches up and submitting late night jokes to the Weekend Update version of our show. So yeah, there's ways to do it, whether it's through a theater or again, like I said, just you and some friends with an iPhone.

3. Don’t be too precious with your ideas.

JG: I found early on with Lilly’s show, if you pitch an idea that gets rejected, just keep it moving. If you pitch an idea that gets changed, don’t be too upset about that.

Don’t be too precious. No matter what you’re working on…if you’re writing things on Twitter or if you’re writing a pilot and you get notes that are like “eh, I don’t like it”. Gotta be able to keep it moving, shrug it off, and figure out what you like about it.

Sometimes notes are just notes. You don’t always have to take notes, but it’s good to be willing to take them because if you’re open to becoming better and evolving, you can listen to what someone is saying and it can help your career or at least your growth in your career.

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I’m Trying - Jonathan Giles

Jonathan’s awesome stand-up special!! Give it a watch!

Go check out everything else he has going on:

Instagram: jgileswrites

Twitter: @JGilesWrites

Web Series: I’m Trying

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THAT’S THE SHOW!

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