Multi-Cam TV Writing Tips from a Top Showrunner
February 11, 2025
Michelle Nader is one of the most accomplished multi-cam and comedy writers working today.
She’s always loved writing, she told us. Starting as a journalist for publications like Cable Guide and Entertainment Weekly, she found herself visiting sets for work and having an epiphany: “I was like, wait, I could do the thing that I’m writing about. I should do that.”
It’s a sentiment that perfectly captures Nader’s straightforward approach to the industry.
After moving to LA “on a lark” and partnering with Amy Cohen to write a comedy spec script in the ‘90s, she landed her first TV writing job during a time when shows were actively seeking women writers.
She built a career in TV, starting with stints on Caroline in the City and Dharma & Greg, eventually landing on hit series Spin City before moving on to The King of Queens, 2 Broke Girls, B Positive, and then Dollface.
It’s an incredibly impressive resume, and that experience is the reason she now is often hired to run writers’ rooms and head the teams for multiple series.
Today, Nader is working on two very different shows—Hulu’s action-comedy streamer Deli Boys, and the multi-cam sitcom Shifting Gears on ABC. The latter premiered on Jan. 8 and stars Tim Allen. The former will soon debut on Hulu March 6. Nader serves as showrunner on both.
Her time across these formats offers valuable insights for aspiring writers, so we were super excited to speak with her about her work and her advice.
Finding “right turns” in your writing
Deli Boys features two bumbling brothers (Asif Ali and Saagar Shaikh) who struggle to take on their father’s business after his death—and discover that their dad was head of a criminal enterprise. The pilot episode is full of plot twist after plot twist, the tension ratcheting up to ridiculous levels with every scene.
Nader emphasizes the importance of what Abdullah Saeed (who wrote the pilot) calls “right turns,” or unexpected shifts in tone and story that keep audiences engaged.
These “Tarantino-esque” moments involve sudden switches between comedy and violence, creating what Nader and her team called “a runaway train to a rocket ride.”
“You’re talking and doing something that seems not that interesting, or it could just be funny, and then there’s violence. Or you’re doing violence, and then you do something that’s just really funny,” she said. “It’s just a lot of those angles that we chased as a sort of formula without being formulaic.”
But these tonal shifts aren’t just for shock value. Nader pointed out they needed to ground even the most extreme moments in reality. This allowed the viewer to connect with the characters.
“We just wanted it to be funny and real. And that was the North Star for us.”
Nader’s view of multi-camera comedy
Perhaps Nader’s most passionate advice concerns multi-camera sitcoms, which she believes present “the highest degree of difficulty and gets the least amount of respect.”
For anyone unfamiliar with the term, “multi-camera” refers to the way the series is shot, with three or four cameras running at once, almost always in front of a live studio audience. The traditional sitcoms you love are shot this way (think Friends, Frasier, and other shows from Nader’s repertoire).
On the page, multi-cam scripts have unique formatting, too. Action and description are always in all caps. Scene headings, and character names on first mention, are underlined. Dialogue is typically double-spaced for easier reading.
The overall sense is more theatrical and fast-paced, while single-cam shows are treated more like a film set. Multi-cam is notoriously difficult to write, although Nader believes most people feel the opposite.
“They think it’s set up, joke, set up. It’s not that at all,” she said.
Jokes are hard enough on their own. They have to feel earned, not forced, and they need to make sense as dialogue.
“There are a lot of jokes, and jokes are really hard to do—really, really hard to do, but to make them sound like they come out of people’s mouths,” she said. “And the characters have to be so specific and well drawn so that you can get away with talking in joke form, but not making it feel so fake.”
Getting into multi-cam writing
The landscape of TV today is unique, and much different from when Nader started. Practice is needed to get the right feel for multi-cam writing, but much of that comes from being on staff.
“In a multi-camera scenario, you’re there for the whole time,” Nader told us. “You’re there for pre-production … you only have about five scripts probably by the time you start shooting. And then you go week-to-week. And you have a table read, you hear that, you have to work on that. Then you go to a run-through when it’s put on its feet. You have to respond to that, rewrite that. Then there’s another run-through. Respond.”
That immersion is not something you get on a streamer, Nader said. She posited that one solution would be to have more TV shows, and therefore more opportunities for writers to get experience.
Nader provided additional advice to up-and-comers. She looks for one key quality in a script.
“I want to feel like I’m in good hands right away.”
If you don’t, you run the risk of losing your reader.
“And I know that because I am guilty of not getting past five pages sometimes, even though I know that’s shitty,” she said. “I just know that generally you really have to know what you’re doing and what you’re saying.”
She cautioned against trying too hard to be shocking or provocative, instead advising writers to focus on honesty and character over plot. Trends are not always going to benefit you.
But even with her extensive experience, Nader remained humble about the writing process. Turns out, she feels the same way most of us do.
“Every time I sit down and write something, I’m like, ‘What? I don’t know how to do this.’ It’s very scary to look at a blank page. I hate it. I really hate it.”
Shifting Gears airs Wednesday nights on ABC. Deli Boys premieres on Hulu March 6.
