(Names and places have been changed to protect the innocent.) A few months ago, I was invited to speak at a highly regarded academic institution, to a group of newbie television writers who signed up for an introductory class in television writing, in which they were tasked with writing their… read more →
Full confession: I am an Excel junkie. I love data. I love slicing and dicing. I love finding commonalities and consensus. I can spend hours sorting data this way and that, exploring the various conclusions it gives me, seeking out new information within it I might not have seen. But… read more →
Full disclosure: Sometimes my job calls for me to be a hard ass. Luckily for me, most of my writers do their work and plough on forward come hell or high water. But when that’s not the case, when the writer is getting “in their own way,” it becomes my… read more →
My husband is not an industry guy. Marrying me, and becoming son-in-law to my producer father, is as close as he ever wanted to come to this business. So when a director friend came over for brunch one Sunday a few months ago and told us how, after his first… read more →
When you hear agents and managers talk about what differentiates them from the competition, many will narrow it down to this: Taste level. The belief that their taste level is superior, and that they are therefore able to single out the most promising talent and most marketable work. Part of… read more →
Recently, a newly minted emerging writer asked me to meet with her. She had recently made the decision to shift careers to screenwriting, got her copy of Final Draft, started taking television writing classes, and now wanted to sit down with me to find out what it was going to… read more →
For many runners, sprints are easy. Marathons are hard. With sprints, you’re in, you’re out. You give it your all for thirty or sixty or ninety seconds and you’re done. Marathons? You have no choice but to pace yourself if you have any hope of making it to the finish… read more →
Over the years, many of my colleagues in representation, development and productions have been kind enough to humor me and ask me for my two cents on material they are developing, producing or considering taking out into the marketplace. And equally, over the years, many have gotten in the habit… read more →
Every writer who goes into an industry meeting with pretty much anyone of consequence has that ONE question that he really hopes no one is going to ask. Don’t fool yourself. EVERYONE has it. The question that they don’t want to have to answer, gnawing at the back of their… read more →
I am an observer of the human experience. Always have been. And nowhere do I get to indulge this particular proclivity more than I do in my work with screenwriters. Add to that the fact that I love numbers and stats and facts and figures; after all, my mentor was… read more →
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