Category: Resources

40 years worth of TV writing experience and info, yours for the taking.

The Ultimate Short Course in Pitching

Two minutes and 10 seconds of what they don’t teach you in your Media Arts college course of study, but they definitely should. (Preferably with producer Tiegen Kosiak at the rostrum.

Tiegen Kosiak is an independent film, TV, and digital producer as well as the co-founder aka “Crime Boss” of The Young Hollywood Mafia, an entertainment networking group with 150+ members.

Tiegen is currently producing the $3MM thriller BORREGO, which she discovered in a Stage 32 pitch session in 2016. The project is incubating at a major studio with a high-level cast attachment. read article

John Ostrander: Art vs the Artist

by John Ostrander

Last column I talked about James Gunn and how he was fired by Disney from the third Guardians installment for some really stupid tweets he published about a decade ago. They were appalling, no questions about it, but I wondered if Disney really needed to fire him for it. Gunn himself has renounced them and apologized. I was further aggravated by the fact that it was a right wing troll who engineered the whole reveal basically to punish Gunn for being anti-Trump.

However, lurking beneath that question is a bigger problem – can you separate the art from the artist? SHOULD you?  read article

Great Advice from Great Screenwriters

Writers are notoriously afraid of psychotherapists, whether they be M.D.’s, Pd.D’s, certified shrinks, or otherwise. But judging from articles like this one, David Silverman is the kind of therapist more writers should embrace:

by David Silverman, MA, LMFT

These screenwriters have advice about how they prepare to write, how they write dialogue, their plotting, which ideas to write, how they keep every scene dramatic, things they keep in mind while writing, how they broke into writing, and even some words of encouragement. read article

Aaron Sorkin on How to Develop Characters

Hey, anybody remember Aaron Sorkin? You know, the boy genius Oscar winning, West Wing creating genius who taught us all that clever dialog was what makes the TV and film writing world go ’round (unless you’re watching a superhero or other tentpole film in which case, fuhgedaboutit)?

Well, Mr. Sorkin is back on YouTube with more cleverly phrased wisdom about characterization. Watch! Listen! Learn! Respect! Oh, hell, go for the whole enchilada and enjoy!

Two Ways To Become A Hollywood Screenwriter

William Martell – AKA Bill – is one of our favorite people here at TVWriter™, as well as a mighty fine writer and teacher. One of the things we like most about Bill is his absolute refusal to give his web posts, including videos, clickbait titles.

In this case, though, we kind of wish he had. Because these just plain old ways to get started, they’re well thought out scenarios that this TVWriter™ minion has seen work…time and time again.

Take it away, Maestro Martell: read article