Mini-Rooms: Breaking Down One of the ‘Evil’ Hollywood Trends Fueling the Writers’ Strike

On Tuesday, May 9 — the seventh day of the WGA strike — George R.R. Martin published a blog post blasting a controversial practice that the Writers’ Guild is aiming to end, or at least heavily regulate, in these negotiations: the mini-room. Highlighting it as “THE most important issue in the current writers’ strike,” Martin called mini-rooms “abominations” and “not only wrong, [but] short-sighted” on the part of the American Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) in ensuring that TV writers, especially junior writers or those trying to break into the industry, are able to build stable, long-term careers on livable wages. 

The author has spent plenty of time in TV writers’ rooms decades before the idea for a Game of Thrones adaptation was ever tossed around at HBO; even prior to A Song of Ice and Fire being published in 1996, his first Hollywood gig was at the bottom rung of The Twilight Zone’s writers’ room in 1985, as he describes in his post. Starting out, “I was so green that I would have been invisible against a green screen,” he writes. “And that, in my opinion, is the most important of the things that the Guild is fighting for. […] To enable new writers, young writers, and yes, prose writers, to climb the same ladder.”

It was his second post in two days demonstrating support for the writers’ work stoppage, the first since the hundred-day strike in 2007-2008. “This one may go longer,” he wrote in a blog titled ‘STRIKE!’ on May 7 as striking writers and supporters picketed studio and streaming company headquarters and sets in Los Angeles and New York, shutting down production on shows like Severance and Billions. (Production on his next show, the Game of Thrones spinoff Hedge Knight, has also been halted, even though filming on House of the Dragon Season 2 has continued.) “The issues are more important, [in my not so humble opinion], and I have never seen the Guild so united as it is now.” 

“If it were up to me, I’d outlaw mini rooms.

Praise for his screed against mini-rooms swiftly catapulted across social media, with many writers sharing their own experiences with how mini-rooms have stymied their careers and industry outsiders remarking on the clarity with which Martin describes why they’re so detrimental for writers’ livelihoods and the quality of TV shows in general. 

“These mini rooms are also why so many writers are going 6 months to a YEAR between jobs. Bc there’s no jobs! The room sizes are so small & when you get out of a room WITHOUT AN EPISODE ON TV to point to it’s incredibly hard to hop on another show,” tweeted Franchesca Ramsey, a TV writer, producer, actress, and vlogger under the name Chescaleigh, who has posted her own helpful explainers on TikTok about the mini-room scourge. 

“If it were up to me, I’d outlaw mini rooms. They have destroyed the quality of TV shows & decimated writer pay. Mini rooms are one of the main reasons I voted to strike!” tweeted Claws writer Darrin Dortch. “Learning about mini-rooms made it suddenly make sense to me that so many shows seem to struggle with continuity or a continual season arc these days. No wonder,” Twitter user @LouisatheLast wrote. 

Learning about mini-rooms made it suddenly make sense to me that so many shows seem to struggle with continuity or a continual season arc these days. No wonder https://t.co/30SqdsFQPo

— Louisa ?? (@LouisatheLast) May 10, 2023

If it were up to me, I’d outlaw mini rooms. They have destroyed the quality of TV shows & decimated writer pay. Mini rooms are one of the main reasons I voted to strike! #WGAStrong https://t.co/BtPmOV1jN5

— Darrin L. Dortch (@LowBudgetLaughs) May 10, 2023

Martin’s blog post might be the highest-profile deriding of mini-rooms, but the issue has been a core bargaining dispute for the WGA West, which published its own explanation for its members. “Mini-room” isn’t outright mentioned in the WGA proposals and AMPTP counteroffers posted to Twitter by bargaining committee member Adam Conover the day the strike began, but is summed up in the plainspeak subhead “Preserving the Writers’ Room,” which outlines employment minimums for writers throughout the duration of a show’s production, from “pre-greenlight” to postproduction, which the AMPTP rejected altogether. 

‘A Nickel-and-Dime Cost-Saving Measure’

Simply put, mini-rooms are exactly what they seem: smaller-than-typical writers’ rooms, maybe just two or three people — a creator-showrunner and a teeny handful of writers — versus the seven or eight or (a lot) more if the show has the budget. Instead of a fully staffed writers’ room staying on through the entire production of a season, these mini-rooms are tasked with outlining full-season arcs and scripting a show on a tight deadline, sometimes as little as four weeks but more often eight-to-ten weeks, that may die on the vine, even if it was initially greenlit. 

Worse yet, if the show that the mini-room plotted out does get picked up, the same writers who generated the story are not guaranteed those same jobs to see the series through production, since mini-rooms are usually disbanded after work has been turned in. In an interview with Vulture, entertainment lawyer-turned-journalist Jonathan Handel shared the same sentiment. 

“Younger staff writers don’t get the experience of doing production rewrites and being involved in postproduction and editing,” he said. “That hampers their ability to climb the career ladder because those skill sets are required for higher levels of seniority in the TV writing business and, ultimately, to become your own showrunner.” 

Worst of all are the untenable wages. Studios and networks have effectively created a loophole to pay writers less — 33% of guild members were paid the contract minimum regardless of experience, according to a bulletin published by the WGAW — for a limited amount of time for a job that they might not even be able to put on their resumes. 

“When people ask me what shows I’ve worked on, I don’t have anything to point to.

“The last 3 shows I’ve worked on have had mini-rooms,” an anonymous script coordinator posted to Reddit. “We spent a few months in the room, did an obnoxious number of rewrites based on absolute garbage executive notes, and tried our best to survive any executive regime changes.  […] All 3 of the shows were canned before making it into production despite the networks ‘pre-greenlighting’ them when we originally started.

“Because of this, I don’t even have legitimate credits I can use to help advance my career. When people ask me what shows I’ve worked on, I don’t have anything to point to. None of them were made. And since these mini-rooms only last a couple months, I’m left trying to find another gig, which feels like trying to break into the industry from scratch each time.”

Because these mini-rooms are so, well, mini, the people filling them out are often looking for the most experienced writers they can get, effectively “cut[ting] out entry level spots,” tweeted Dylan Guerra, who wrote on Season 3 of Max’s The Other Two. “Why would they hire lil’ dyl-from-one-show when they can get a more seasoned multi-Emmy producer? They won’t.”

It also means less opportunity for all writers but especially “low-level” writers like moiself who are new to tv. Because mini-rooms often cut out entry level spots. Why would they hire lil’ dyl-from-one-show when they can get a more seasoned multi-Emmy producer? They won’t. /3

— dylan guerra (@DylanGGuerra) May 4, 2023

“The mini rooms have blocked the growth of people. I had a boss leading a huge production who had never been on set before and that is crazy. We’re setting people up for failure,” Swarm showrunner Janine Nabers said in a roundtable with the LA Times. She continued: “There are people in this industry who are very rich, who abuse power and abuse mini rooms, and they hire all these writers and they take all of their outlines. And then as soon as the contract is done, they take their work and they put their name on it and those people are erased. And that is a fundamental problem with this industry.” 

’The De Facto New Normal for Streamers’

According to Variety, AMC Network “pioneered” the concept about 10 years ago, and more recently, both streaming companies and other networks hopped aboard as the pressure of content churn ramped up to draw in more and more subscribers. 

“Mini-rooms have become the de facto new normal for streamers in the way a hefty percentage of streaming shows are being developed and written,” Handel told Vulture. In lieu of the more standard development process to pilot — a lengthy road of pitching an idea to networks, staffing a writers’ room to outline and write the pilot script if the series wasn’t picked up for a whole season, get rounds and rounds of feedback on it, shoot and edit it, and eventually maybe getting the greenlight while producers and showrunners are building and retaining a writing staff — streaming services like Netflix are foregoing pilot orders that might result in a, say, 22-episode series and going for full series orders that cap out around 13 episodes a season. 

“It’s seen as a nickel-and-dime cost-saving measure,” an anonymous WGA West member, who first heard about mini-rooms in the last “five or six years,” told IndieWire. “The work I’m doing is everything I would do in a normal episodic, picked-up-to-series writing room. […] There’s absolutely nothing mini about it. The only thing mini about it is our pay.” 

In that earlier WGAW bulletin on pay, TV writers have seen a 23% decline in wages, adjusted for inflation, over the last 10 years.

In a TikTok video filmed from a picket line in LA, Melinda Hsu Taylor, who has written for shows like Lost, The Vampire Diaries, and the Nancy Drew reboot, explains how “the studios are pressuring the system in a way that makes us gig workers, essentially, […] but the point of a union is that we don’t get treated like that.”

Mini-rooms really are lousy. I have been in two and learned a lot but you give up your work and ideas and have nothing to show for it when the show you worked on gets greenlit and airs on a streamer with a whole new set of writers getting credit for the ideas you helped generate. https://t.co/XzX5f44MoB

— roxane gay (@rgay) May 10, 2023

Mini rooms are evil and they started them in order to squeeze out an entire season of TV from us by dangling the possibility of your show being picked up. But then after you’ve written an entire season for them for pennies in weeks, they’ll turn around and go, “changed my mind.” https://t.co/KXgwsDAGit

— Caroline “WGA Captain on Strike” Renard (@carolinerenard_) May 10, 2023

Writers being relegated to mini rooms is the equivalent of actors being downgraded from series regular to recurring and from recurring to guest star. It’s not possible for actors to make a living that way and it’s been happening for years. Drescher should listen to her members.

— John Levenstein (@johnlevenstein) May 10, 2023

In reality, the lack of continuity created by mini-rooms might not even save studios as much money as they think they are. “The efforts to save so much money upfront end up costing so much more in the long run, and I’ve just seen that happen multiple times because I don’t think the studio execs realize that the show that you write and the show that you shoot are just so different,” an anonymous script coordinator told SlashFilm. 

Per a state of the industry report from the union, combined profits from entertainment companies were estimated to be more than $20 billion in 2021. The guild’s proposals — which, beyond curbing mini-rooms, include higher wage minimums, fair streaming residuals, and regulating the use of AI in projects — would cost about $600 million per year, or, according to WGA officials in Variety, 2% of major studios’ profits. 

What if I told my landlord that this month I’m just going to pay a mini rent? ????

— Ashley Nicole Black (@ashleyn1cole) May 2, 2023

“It’s not acceptable for the companies to just say, ‘Well now we want you to do all the work with fewer people in a smaller amount of time and that’s fine,’” Ellen Stutzman, the guild’s chief negotiator, told Variety in March, ahead of the strike authorization. 

As David Goodman, the co-chair of the guild’s negotiating committee, puts it: “There’s a million reasons why there needs to be guardrails put around that.”

For more on the writers’ strike, check out all the TV shows and movies that have been impacted.