I think ultimately what makes the show is not the reality but the drama.

What you have to get used to as a writer is realizing that most of what you come up with is wrong for the show.

I actually started in the opposite place. I come from a technical background - I'm a mathematician and a programmer by trade - and I was one of those people who would watch a show and say, "Oh, that could never happen."

The rule, I think, is: Do your homework, learn what there is to learn about the real world, and then when you get in the room, forget it all.

The idea that you could stitch together every detail episode to episode and preserve continuity for the length of a season and tell a story while using no time cuts, no flashbacks, nothing but pure real time just seemed too difficult.

You know, it's hard as a writer to lose characters (and actors) you like. You really don't want them to die because you're not going to get to see them anymore.

To be fair to ourselves, in almost every original script, the timing is actually worked out down to the minute.