After more than a decade of fires, medical emergencies, police cases and character upheaval, the writers behind NBC’s One Chicago dramas face a deceptively difficult question every season: how do you keep finding something new?
At WGFestival 2026, hosted by the Writers Guild Foundation, showrunners Allen MacDonald, Gwen Sigan and Victor Teran pulled back the curtain on how Chicago Med, Chicago P.D. and Chicago Fire continue generating stories after 12, 14 and 15 seasons, respectively.
For Sigan, who runs Chicago P.D., the process begins with character rather than crime. “We always do character first – what’s everybody going through, what’s their arc,” she said. “You’d be surprised how late it is until we actually add crimes.”
Each new season also revolves around a broader theme, giving the room a framework before individual cases are layered in.
On Chicago Med, MacDonald starts with a larger seasonal concept, then lets the room work toward the specific signposts that will define the early episodes. “We take a day, and we start pitching medical stories,” he said. “Generally from there, we start thinking about the first four episodes and breaking them down, assigning writers.”
Teran faced a different challenge when taking over Chicago Fire for its 15th season: inheriting a major cliffhanger involving a roof collapse and explosion at Firehouse 15. The room initially explored multiple possibilities before settling on the direction for the new season.
“It started in one place, and then as we talked it out, it ended in another place,” Teran said. “But it’s going to be big.”
One of the biggest challenges facing long-running procedurals is finding scenarios the shows haven’t already tackled.
For Chicago Fire, which is approaching its 300th episode, Teran joked that the writers have nearly reached “the end of Google.”
“We’ve kind of accepted that everything possible for the fire department to do, we’ve done it,” he said.
The solution isn’t always to invent a completely new emergency. Instead, the writers look for new character circumstances, different victims or a fresh emotional angle.
“There’s always a new way of doing it,” Teran said.
MacDonald takes a similar approach on Chicago Med. When a medical story sounds familiar, the room asks whether the show has used it recently and, more importantly, how the new version can feel meaningfully different.
On Chicago P.D., Sigan said evolving real-world criminal behavior helps provide new angles even when familiar subjects return. Narcotics, for example, may appear repeatedly, but the drugs, methods and people involved continue changing.
Technical consultants are another key resource across the Wolf shows, though the writers do not always get to use everything they learn.
Some procedures, investigative methods or tactical details remain off limits because advisors do not want television giving criminals a blueprint for how law enforcement operates.
The showrunners also acknowledged that fan feedback inevitably finds its way into the room.
Writers may bring up Reddit threads or online reactions while evaluating what worked and what didn’t during the previous season, but MacDonald cautioned against letting those comments dictate the story.
“It’s fun to read those things just to know what they’re thinking, but you cannot make any decisions based on it,” he said.
His reasoning is simple: one thread may celebrate a creative choice while another tears apart the same decision.
“If you believe the compliments, you also have to believe the criticisms,” MacDonald said, “and I choose not to listen to either.”
That tension – between listening to audiences and still surprising them – may be one of the central reasons the Chicago shows have lasted as long as they have.
After hundreds of episodes, the writers may occasionally reach the end of Google.
They still haven’t reached the end of Chicago.
This article originally appeared on Writtenby.com. For the full article by Evan Henerson, click here.
