“From being on a set, the directing came fairly naturally,” McKenzie says. “It was challenging, but there were a lot of things that I understood about directing just from observing, just from watching director’s work. Writing often takes place behind-the-scenes. Physical production is not privy to how scripts come out … I wasn’t so familiar with that process of breaking a story, of starting with a story document, then an outline, and then a draft; it was informative.”

If there was one thing that most surprised McKenzie about the TV scriptwriting process, it was the “story math,” as he called it.

“The structure of the six acts in network television is very specific and you need to be very aware of where each act break is going to fall, how the action is going to rise-fall, rise-fall, so on and so on, in order to have it play the way you’d like it to play,” McKenzie explains. “I don’t think I’d given enough thought to [things like that] because you sort of take it for granted when you see it on the page.”

Of course, coming from the world of TV acting — and acting on the show he was writing for, in particular — did give him an edge.

“I certainly understood the nature of each character because of working alongside the cast. I knew their voices relatively well,”McKenzie says. “The other great thing about being on the other side, as an actor, is I felt pretty un-precious about all of it. Something that isn’t working for them, I would usually be the first one to say, ‘Yeah, you’re right. That doesn’t work. Let’s change it.’ And throw it away. And I think that facilitates the collaborative process.”