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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
You guys are going to love me on this one, right off the bat, for one simple reason: There are no 3 steps to building a screenwriting career. It doesn’t exist. If there were three simple steps to building a screenwriting career, one-two-three-paycheck, someone would have formulated it, sold it,… 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 →
This past year was good to many of my writers. And I’m not talking about the ones who got staffed again, or the ones who landed repeat writing assignments. I am talking about those writers who moved up the “emerging” ladder: Made it into fellowships, landed reputable representation, pitched studios… read more →
Dear writers (or as Todd likes to call you, My Scrappers), Returning home from a Thanksgiving getaway to San Francisco, I sat on my bed with my beautiful 8-year-old son and my sparkly 4-year-old daughter for our nightly ritual, tell-me-time. My son mused: “Mommy, don’t you wish you and daddy… read more →
To many emerging writers her in Los Angeles, Tawnya Bhattacharya needs little introduction: Not only is she a working television writer who has been staffed consistently for the last four years, but she is also the mastermind behind Script Anatomy, the elite television-centric writing program attended by many a television-aiming… read more →
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