As with most television series, the writers of Dallas worked hard to ensure the success of the story lines. Officially, writers worked 51 weeks of the year; the only time off was a week during the Christmas season. Their philosophy of writing was to make the story first, then add the actors, rather than the opposite. Many series would add the actors and then write the story to fit that actor.

Because Dallas was a story in continuation, the writers needed to immediately write the new scripts based on the way the series ended the season before. The main producers of the show developed a 12-story “Bible”, so to speak. In each episode, there was to be about 25 scenes, divided into 4 parts. Scenes are shorter in the Dallas scripts, using about 2½ pages of dialog. The producers wanted more development of character, and less development of plot.

Most Dallas scripts were written by in-house writers of the series, but occasionally free-lance writers were included. The job was demanding, and the writers were given freewill to call the producers with any questions about the script. The writers earned about $16,000 for each script.

With the scripts written, the producers received the “red cover”, so they could work with upcoming locations and props. Many times, scripts needed to be re-written (much as 50%), and actors received what is called a “yellow cover”. This is the actual shooting script. Of course, it was always necessary that writers be able to create a scene “on the spot” to cover any sudden changes, such as climate conditions or an actor's illness.