Nancy Cartwright.

Dear Fans,

Over the next few articles, I am branching out and asking my industry friends to give me their insider takes. I am going to focus on subjects that professionals need to have some knowledge of and get opinions from a wide range of specialties and hats in the business.

So far I have interviewed my good friends Jack Thomas (The Replacements), and Mike Scully (The Simpsons). These responses are from my good friend Carolyn Omine, a long-time writer on The Simpsons.

Carolyn has written for The Simpsons since 1997. Episodes she has written include: "Little Big Mom," the Night Of The Dolphin segment of "Treehouse Of Horror XI," "The Great Money Caper," the Wiz Kids segment of "Treehouse Of Horror XII," "Sweets and Sour Marge," "The Strong Arms Of The Ma," "Smart & Smarter," "A Star Is Torn," "Ice Cream Of Margie," "The Homer Of Seville" and "N is for Nerder." She has won four Emmy awards with the show. She also directs the vocal performances.

Omine was born and raised in Hawaii where she worked as a baby photographer and sang with a rock band in Waikiki. She moved to Los Angeles to attend UCLA, and began doing improv and sketch comedy. In 1989, she was asked to join the writing staff of Stand By Your Man, the American version of the British sitcom, Birds of a Feather. She has written for several sitcoms, including Full House and for other animated shows, such as Aaahh!!! Real Monsters and The Wild Thornberrys.

She lives with two cats and a small human boy.

And now for your questions:

Nancy Cartwright: How did you get your "lucky break?" And what got you interested in writing for animation?

Carolyn Omine: I was writing and performing a lot of sketch comedy and improv. One of my fellow performers was Mark Steen. His sister, Nancy Steen, was an established television writer/producer. My day job was working for a very successful literary agent. One day, Nancy called my boss looking to hire one of his writer-clients. I said hello and transferred her to my boss. After he hung up, he told me that Nancy said he should represent me as a writer. He told her that she should hire me. She said, "Have her write a spec script and maybe I will." I wrote a script and she hired me to be on the staff of Stand By Your Man. It was an incredible break.

Carolyn Omine finds The Simpsons' actors are a dream for writers. ™ & © The Simpsons and TTCFFC all rights reserved. ™ & © Fox Broadcasting. Cr: Fox.

Writing for animation does offer a lot of freedom. You aren't necessarily bound by the laws of physics, really, which are fun, but not actually the draw for me. The draw for The Simpsons was the excellent writing and that they didn't get network notes. I've written for other animated shows, mainly for fun. I was working on a sitcom and during my hiatus I wrote a Real Monsters because my friend, Mark Steen, (once again!) was running the show and the best part was that he practically put my first draft on the air -- there was very little rewriting.

NC: As one of the few voice directors for the show, how much do you rely on what the actor's do to contribute to the final product?

CO: We have fantastic actors. It is so satisfying to write for them. I've worked on many shows where your writing was limited, because the actors were limited. We got orders like, "He can't do irony -- so don't write those kinds of jokes." or "Don't write anything with "Ss," because of her lisp!" Or the actors would paraphrase everything. I've written with great writers before The Simpsons, but their good stuff never quite made it through the filters of network notes and actor adlibs. After you get your heartbroken watching jokes get mangled, it's hard to keep morale up. Why spend time on the wording of joke when the actor's just gonna do whatever?

The Simpsons' actors are a dream. First of all, they are so capable that we are never limited in what we can write for them. And they are very respectful of the writing. They adlib occasionally, but only after giving us what we wrote. I would say 90% of the time, our actors give us exactly what we hoped for -- some times it'll be even better than we imagined. It's so much more fun to write jokes knowing that they will be given a chance. We take great care and have a lot of fun playing with the wording of jokes. And that makes a huge difference.

NC: Please describe the writing process for a show.

CO: We all pitch ideas for stories. The show runner, currently Al Jean, decides which will get made into scripts. We each get about one script a season. Usually you get to write the idea you pitched. Sometimes you get assigned an idea that Al or Matt wants written, or sometimes an idea you pitched will be written by someone else.