ScreenwriterGuy.com

When we were building our sketch comedy troupe back in Seattle, it took a while for everything to ramp up. Getting to the point of having a functional core group… well, let’s just say that not everyone was a good fit right from the beginning. Now that I’m starting an online troupe down here in [...]

When I attended the “Breaking Into the Box” workshop at the WGA a couple of weekends ago, I was surprised to hear Shawn Ryan (creator of The Shield) recalling his distress when he suddenly got his show on the air. In TV, the writer has creative control comparable to the way a director calls the [...]

Sometimes I miss my old sketch comedy days. There’s something special about being on stage with a group of friends who have poured their free time into creating entertainment, working to find out if those lines you’ve been honing are as funny as you hoped. It can be pretty magical to feel the chemistry of [...]

There were two main arguments with which I convinced myself that, lack of Douglas fir trees or no, I needed to move to L.A. The first was simply that I couldn’t expect to become a television writer anywhere else. The second, admittedly smaller, was that the number of industry events here had to be at [...]

Perhaps the best job description for “producer” I’ve ever heard was exemplified for me in a college improv group. Upon discovering that another group was using our rehearsal space, the director said to his colleague, “You’re the producer. Produce us a room.” It’s difficult to describe what a producer does, especially since the specific responsibilities [...]

I admit that my years in sketch comedy left me a little burnt out. I am not the dynamo I once when it comes to producing, directing, acting, editing, publicizing, sound designing, ticket-taking, and doing whatever else it takes to get my writing made. I had refocused my energy on TV writing, a light having [...]

I was out this weekend with a small group.  One of our number is a producer for a straight-to-DVD production company.  Upon learning that I am a writer, he enthusiastically invited me to give him a call some time, as his group needed writers, and they had several projects they wanted to make happen. OK, [...]

I had the good fortune to attend one of America’s more prestigious universities. While there, I read an excellent column in which the author found the student body guilty of raised inflection when telling people where we went to school. It was a way of asking forgiveness, simultaneous with one’s confession of being an overachiever. [...]

Yesterday I posted that the time to really take a look at changing your script is when you start to hear more than one trusted voice providing the same opinion.Following my reading, there has been exactly one thing that more than one industry professional suggested I change in Fat Guy, Hot Wife. It concerns a [...]

Ha-ha!  My efforts to involve talent in my upcoming reading have paid off.  I got word today from the manager of my first choice that she will be joining us.  Which means she must have read my script and decided it didn’t totally suck.  Sweeeeet.

Yesterday I felt so knowledgeable about my process of getting talent to consider joining my reading. And I still am, but I also made a big mistake today. An agent gave me a slap on the wrist, and I deserved it. Now, kids, don’t do what Donny Don’t does…I was at the final stage, where [...]

When we started the process of putting together the table reading for Fat Guy, Hot Wife, “Seth” indicated that he wanted to involve only actors with significant TV credits. I created a wish list of people I felt had the right look and background, and he indicated that he had a connection here or there [...]