What I learned from writing on Young Justice

In 2019, I broke into my first opportunity to be a credited, paid screenwriter for studio television. And of all the shows I could have landed, I was hired to write on the critically-acclaimed, fan-loved show, Warner Bros. Entertainment x DC Comics #YoungJustice on HBO Max created by Greg Weisman and Brandon Vietti.

Here are a few things I learned from that first studio writing job.

Lesson #1 - Long is the road

Even before coming onto the show, the history of Young Justice renewals was a lesson in-and-of-itself. Here's two proven showrunners, who fought season after season for years between seasons to keep telling this story. Those are just facts about the television landscape.

And that's just on Young Justice. Greg Weisman is literally the creator of the epic animated show Gargoyles, and zooming out, Greg has worked on and continues to work on so many animated shows and films - one's he's created and many more not created by himself - that it can be overwhelming to look at his track record!

Even at it's best, writing and working in television is truly a project-to-project gig economy for even the most established people in this business. One can easily find Dakota Johnson lamenting that it's tough to get her next projects made, and filmmakers as groundbreaking as Charlie Kauffman talk about how much rejection they've faced.

It's only when we zoom out that all these projects (including all the canceled and unpublished materials) over a lifetime add up to make a career. It's a small world, one in which everyone is each other's boss at some point. Humility and being a decent person to work with are a necessity here!

All that being said, I learned a lot from Greg's perseverance just from looking at his IMDB page.

Lesson #2 - To produce excellent work, there is NO substitution for EFFORT

The first time I walked into the Young Justice writing offices at Warner Bros., I was completely floored. I want to say that 3 of the 4 ENTIRE WALLS in Greg Weisman's office were covered from ceiling to floor in index cards, all for one episode. That is the amount of immense detail, thoughtfulness, inter-and-intra-planetary connecting that he and Brandon Vietti put into every single episode of their 26 episodes per season, for 4 seasons.

Their hard work was literally visible. That is work ethic. There's good, there's get the job done, and then there's excellence. They're in the business of producing excellence!

Their effort spoke volumes to me as a writer breaking into studio writing at the time.

Lesson #3 - A writer's job is to make a showrunner's tough job any bit easier.

When I first dove into Young Justice, I was in absolute awe. This show has over 200+ working characters, with all their deep canonical history that needs to be honored while also building new and exciting stories into the DC canon. Wow. That is what the showrunners have on their plate, and that's just story-wise, not taking into account the actual production (amidst the beginning of covid at that!) and other parts of their job.

If they were handling all that, if they were putting in so much effort into that, I couldn't imagine phoning it in on their beloved show. How bananas would that be!

This was not a "starter script" (is there such a thing?!). This was game time. I needed to pull my weight and doing JUST that would take a lot of work on this show.

You better believe I studied each and every one of their 72 episodes across Seasons 1-3 leading into 4. And I came prepared to the writer's room to contribute thoughtfully while deferring to their expertise.

Lesson #4 - Respectful collaboration has proven results

The first thing I noticed about Greg Weisman and Brandon Vietti was their willingness to listen without being defensive. They actually listen to their audience's thoughts about the intregrity of their stories (without giving into people-pleasing). And they were already listening to thoughtful consultants including those at the Muslim Public Affairs Council Foundation Hollywood Bureau.

That culture of listening is present in their writer's room. I had the opportunity to not only to write for epic characters like Zatanna, Mary Bromfield, Blue Beetle, and Traci 13, but to dive into shaping Muslim characters in the DC Universe!

The way Greg Weisman and Brandon Vietti allowed me to help shape Halo and Khalid Nassour's backstory, inner conflicts, and outward challenges is now a part of canon! How cool is that!

Fast forward to Season 4's release - the fans absolutely raved about the changes they noticed in Halo's story arcs, and completely lost it over Khalid Nassour's conflicts that were universally relatable, yet grounded in the specificity of his culture and faith. People from all over the world felt heard by his experience.

I was so, so happy to see that the thoughtful collaboration that went into those stories was felt by the Young Justice audience, and am forever grateful to the showrunners for allowing me to be a part of that.

Lesson #5 - Hard work doesn't go unnoticed by secure people

I came to the Young Justice writer's room with a literal binder full of research and preparation. I had done a script breakdown not only on the Young Justice pilot, but on each and every one of their 72 episodes from S1-3. Yes. I did a detailed, minute-by-minute breakdown of every single episode to learn this show as well as I possibly could with the time that I had. And drew character maps of as many characters as I could to quickly reference their names and main relationships and abilities. I wrote on that show like it was my first, only, and last opportunity to write in television.

And the showrunners noticed! Hollywood is a recommendation business, and you can't ASK to be recommended here. Your work is just noticed as good, fine or not good enough and this information is mentally filed away until someone comes asking for recommendations on who to hire.

It's not an understatement to say that that Greg and Brandon not only took a chance on me to hire me for my first paid studio screenwriting opportunity, but the respect people have for them and their recommendation of me opened the door for the next five years+ of screenwriting opportunities.

#Screenwriting #Scriptwriting #Animation #TVWriting

P.S. I'm Nida Chowdhry, a Pakistani Muslim-American writer/director, producer and actor in Hollywood. My Eternal Sunshine and Amelie inspired debut feature film ANXIOUS. is launching soon.