You might hear as a writer that getting some experience in the comedy space can help you be more flexible and adroit as a writer, regardless of your genre. This might mean improv or trying stand-up, which can teach a lot about structure, setup and payoff, and tone. Stand-up also has the fastest feedback loop in entertainment. A screenwriter might wait years to learn whether a scene works, but a comic finds out the same night.
Which is why I was excited today to check out David Perell's podcast with comedian Taylor Tomlinson about writing. Tomlinson has four hour-long Netflix specials: Quarter-Life Crisis, Look at You, Have It All, and Prodigal Daughter. She's the former host of After Midnight. Her first book, an essay collection, was published Sept. 22, 2026, by Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster.
Let's learn how Tomlinson mines material, tests it, protects herself in it, and pushes through the doubt. Check out the full conversation here.
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Write Toward What You’re Unsure About
When you're starting a project, you might think it's easier to start with what you're sure of. Write what you know, and all that. Tomlinson starts with what she can’t settle. When prepping a stand-up routine, she knows she'll spend a couple of years on the material, so it needs to keep her curious.
"And then I just kind of work off of whatever subjects I find most interesting at that time. A lot of times it’s subjects that I’m not sure how I feel. Like I’ve written a lot of jokes about having kids because I’m not sure how I feel about that right now, and I go back and forth on whether or not I want them. So that feels like a very rich area for jokes."
Ambivalence is actually a stage for built-in conflict. A character who goes back and forth on something has a story. Her book runs on the same idea, and the publisher describes it as essays on the art of changing your mind. And that's very relatable.
“I think that if you find something that’s specific about you, more often times than not, it is more universal than you think.”
Get Your Pages in Front of People Fast
Writing is super vulnerable, because it feels like you're sharing a part of how you see the world with an audience. But sometimes you don't actually know how it'll play until you hear it out loud.
“I think what I love most about it is, I love that you can write something at four o’clock and at eight o’clock you find out if it’s good or not," Tomlinson said of stand-up. "I like the immediate gratification of it. I also really liked writing the book and being like in a blanket for months and months going, 'We’ll find out if this sucks in two years.' I liked that too. Very different."
Either way, the goal is to eventually have an audience and see how they respond. If you're a screenwriter, that means hearing your work out loud. Especially if you're writing comedy.
“Well, you don’t know if they’re jokes if you haven’t tried them. You’ve written a lot. That’s great, but you don’t know if it’s a joke yet until someone laughs at it.”
Screenwriters don’t have a club, but they do have table reads. You should have them, and you should record the audio from them. That's what Tomlinson does with her sets.
“I don’t film every show, but I record every single one, audio. So, I usually listen to it on planes or walking around, mostly. It’s easier to listen to your set when you’re walking around as opposed to sitting on a plane just like going, 'Wow, I really thought that joke hit harder, but I guess not.' It never sounds exactly how you think the show went, right? Which is why it’s important to listen to your sets because sometimes something went better than you thought, and sometimes things went not as well as you thought.”
'Prodigal Daughter'Credit: Netflix
Know How the Audience Sees You
Tomlinson is obviously a performer, so this matters a great deal in her work, but it kind of matters to all writers. Voice depends on what you say, and it also depends on how you’re received. She talks about being perceived as a Midwesterner, even though she's from California.
“I think you've got to know how you’re perceived by people. I think that’s a really important part of comedy, is figuring out what people see when you walk on stage so that you know which jokes are going to work best for you.”
I'd say this applies more to the performance side, for sure, but you might also just have an awareness of this if you're pitching or wanting to work in a certain genre.
The industry loves to be able to categorize people. If you write one animated film and it does well, you might just become the animation guy. If you do a couple of romance projects, you might get a lot of OWA suggestions that are just romance, even if you want to write action instead. It could take a lot of incremental changes or the course of a few projects to get out of that box.
Tomlinson also points out that how you're perceived might be stereotypical, but it can also show up in your writing or in how you talk about yourself.
"There’s a responsibility in how you talk about yourself, and how that’s then metabolized by your audience."
Again, you're probably not doing a self-insert every time you write a character, but there are times that your worldview and tone come through on the page. If you're bitter, self-deprecating, or lack confidence, that can seep into your work.
Write the Bad Stuff First
This won't be the first time you've probably heard this advice—but the first draft is probably always going to be bad. This goes for jokes too.
"Anyone who starts standup at any age, the first 20 minutes you write is just going to be a bunch of stuff that has probably already been done a lot better. But you have to write that stuff first. You have to get all of that out."
This is often called a vomit draft. Just get something out. Fix it later.
For Tomlinson, her lifeline is other writers admitting it’s hard. She names Bird by Bird, which The New Republic notes devotes entire chapters to perfectionism, jealousy, and writer’s block. She also names Ann Patchett’s The Getaway Car.
It is hard to write, and it's hard to be perceived. But hopefully you do it anyway.
