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.

My background is in math and science, and I thrive on complexity, and I think lots of people do. People love puzzles; it's human nature to want to solve puzzles.

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.

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.

What happens is that as the scripts are rewritten and re-edited in order to make the story more compelling, you sometimes end up with what you could call a time singularity - where there's no way for everything that happens to happen in real time. It's something that you need to wink at.

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.