Writer

Q: What advice do you have for a customer looking to hire a provider like you?

A: You also have to really be able to execute your ideas. Like I said, any person off the street can have an idea, but only you can write it the way you’ll write it. You should work every day to sharpen that. Be able to walk into a room, hear an idea, and know how you’d shape it and where you’d take it. That’s one of the things I’ve worked hardest on, is knowing that I’d bring that unique perspective to a room, be able to take a scene direction and run with it, and trust the characters to carry the plot forward in the right way. Those character dynamics are a huge part of your execution, and they’re part of what makes you unique as a writing asset. You should work at that every day if you want to be a serious writer. Write, read, rewrite.

Q: What's your strongest skill?

A: With writing, you have to first develop your voice. Any guy off the street can say he has an idea for a movie, and you read a lot of scripts that are some conglomerate of disparate ideas that loosely make a piece, explosions and chases and the like, but a great writer’s voice will seep through every sentence they write. You’ll read what they write and know it was absolutely written by them. I often hear that’s the hardest part of a writer’s journey, but it came naturally to me, maybe another point in favor of my possibly being an outlier. After developing that unique voice, you have to ensure that each character doesn’t just speak with the voice of the writer. That’s a hurdle to jump, and one of my favorites, because you want each character to be a developed person with their own thoughts and their own experiences, traumas, whatever the case may be, so that your piece feels like a realistic and intriguing collection of voices rather than just you spoon-feeding exposition and the theme to the viewer. I try to never write a single line of exposition, but that’s beside the point.

Q: Describe the most common type of work you do for your clients.

A: Most of my time is spent in front of Final Draft working in character-driven pieces that explore the human condition in unique ways. It’s an exciting place to be, to be able to create so freely, to be able to connect with people through such an emotional and intriguing medium. You’re painting a thousand pictures, just with words on a page. I’ve gravitated toward writing for the screen because it’s the most distilled and potent form of writing, it’s an economical concern to include more than is absolutely necessary, so you learn how to best convey difficult ideas in an accessible form.