Leading up to the 4th annual Toronto Screenwriting Conference on April 6 and 7, Playback is featuring Q&As with some of the all-star writers leading the conference, which takes place at Ryerson University’s Ted Rogers School of Management in Toronto.

BW: About three years ago I got a call from my agent saying David Fincher wanted to discuss working on House of Cards together.  I hadn’t seen the BBC version, but I had heard about how it was a cult classic in the U.K.  I watched it and immediately my synapses started firing – how to Americanize it, contemporize it, make it our own.

I got on the phone with Fincher, Eric Roth and Josh Donen (fellow producer-writers). We all shared the same instincts and decided to team up.

I worked on the first episode for about a year. Eventually Kevin Spacey agreed to star as the lead. He also came on board as an EP with his producing partner Dana Brunetti. Around the same time, Robin Wright agreed to star in the series as well. With our script and our stars, it was now time to find a home.

We met with several networks, but Netflix made us an offer we couldn’t refuse – two seasons guaranteed upfront and creative freedom. We loved the idea of being their first original show. As soon as we partnered with them, I hired a writing staff and got to work. We spent seven months writing all 13 episodes of season one before we shot a single frame, which was a luxury. There was a lot of re-writing during production, but we had a clear sense of the story and where everything was going.

What was the writers’ room like for House of Cards?

BW: For season one I rented a three-story house in Venice, California. I lived on the top floor and the bottom floor served as the writers room. It was a big, open room with high ceilings and a lot of wall space. At the center of the room we put two big wooden tables together to create a square which we all sat around. Although sometimes we’d move to the couches or pace about if we need to get on our feet.

It’s important to me to have a creative space, not a corporate office environment. We used white boards and cork boards for cards. There weren’t many distractions – when we were there, we worked, and we worked hard – with focus and efficiency. I kept fairly humane office hours:  10am – 6pm. Some days we’d work later if we needed to tackle something on deadline or the inspiration was really flowing.

Once we moved to the production phase in Baltimore, I brought out a few of the writers. They worked out of the production office in Edgewood, Maryland. I usually worked out of my trailer on set, and would check in with them at the office throughout the day.

You adapted Netflix’s House of Cards from the BBC series. And you adapted your play Farragut North into a feature film. What are some considerations you made when adapting material for a different platform?

You want to be respectful to the source material, but that comes second to serving the story. Naturally when you adapt something, you are making changes. Those are a result of your personal voice, the actors you cast, new narrative choices and so on. As those changes accumulate, the adaptation takes on a life of its own. You have to stay true to what it needs, not be chained to the source material.

With House of Cards we stole a lot, but it’s not so much an adaptation as a re-invention. Beyond the first couple episodes, there’s very little similarity to the BBC version. And the characters are completely different in many ways. We also have a great deal more characters, and a much more expansive story – mostly due to the fact that we have significantly more hours to work with than the 12 hours total that comprised the BBC series.

And what were some of the similarities and differences in the writing process when you were adapting the material in these two projects?

Apples and oranges, really.  Adapting my own play, I already knew the voices of the characters well. And of course George Clooney and Grant Heslov contributed a great deal of work on the screenplay. From the very beginning I knew it was George’s movie, and I was thrilled about that. He had a keen understanding of the story, and I was happy to let him find his own way through it with his own voice.

With House of Cards I was developing new voices from scratch, and the narrative scope was so much larger. Eight hundred pages for season one as opposed to the 120 pages for Ides of March. And most of those 800 pages consisted of new story, so I couldn’t rely on the source material all that much. And of course with a TV show you’re managing a whole team of writers, all of whom are bringing their own voices to each script.

When did you know that House of Cards would be released with all 13 episodes at once, and did it change the way you wrote the episodes? Did you have any reservations about Netflix releasing them all at once, versus one at a time?

BW: We made the decision to release all 13 episodes same-day during the middle of production. It had always been a possibility, but so had a traditional week-to-week release. Our thinking was that Netflix subscribers are used to controlling the when, where, pace and quantity of the TV shows they like, so why not give them that experience from the very beginning? Binge-viewing is not required. It’s an option, but so is watching the show more slowly.  We like letting the viewers decide.

There were some firsts with House of Cards – your first time working in TV, David Fincher’s first foray into TV, Netflix’ first original episodic series – do you think that was advantageous? Were there ever some “What are we doing?” moments and how did you get past them?

BW: All the time! None of us had any experience in TV. “Neophytes” is the word Fincher likes to use. Of course we had some very experienced people on the production side, and all of us on the creative side were veteran storytellers in film and theater, so we weren’t completely unprepared.

We certainly stumbled from time to time adapting to the new medium, but for the most part we just focused on telling a good story. And the way we did that was by not attempting to make a TV show at all. Rather we aimed to make a 13-hour movie. We trusted our instincts and our actors. It worked for us. After seven months of writing and seven months of shooting – voila – we had season one.

You’ve worked in film, you’ve worked with a digital platform. Would you consider now pitching to traditional TV? Or is Netflix the future of TV?

BW: I will go wherever I have the opportunity to tell the best stories. Whether that’s Netflix or more “traditional” formats.  I do think, however, that the Netflix model is the future of TV. And that’s because any distinction between TV and the internet – or digital platforms – is completely falling away. Five years from now there won’t be any difference between the two.

What advice would you give to an aspiring screenwriter?

BW: Don’t be a writer. It’s a vocation rife with self-doubt, self-loathing, degradation, in which the odds of success are heavily stacked against you.

If you ignore this advice and write anyway, however, that means you truly are a writer – because despite the despair and odds, you feel compelled to tell stories. If that’s the case, there is really only one piece of useful advice anyone can give you – put in the hours. Writing well isn’t rocket science. It’s directly proportional to the amount of time and effort you dedicate to it. As with most vocations, there’s no substitute for working hard. What makes someone a writer is that they write – a lot. It’s a trial and error game. It never gets easier. You can learn certain tricks of the trade, elements of craft, but if you’re constantly challenging yourself to be original, pushing your own boundaries, you will fail more often than you succeed.

Success through failure requires time, and perseverance, and pages.

What projects are you working on and what’s next for you?

BW: Hard at work on season two of House of Cards!