When I decided to be a writer, people told me I needed to move to LA immediately. I couldn't and spent years feeling like a huge coward for not being able to. However, now that I'm here and working, I realize the game has changed. Here's how I think about it: 🧵 The ADVANTAGE of moving to LA is that you meet a TON of people. If you're cool, this might get you an entry-level, writing-adjacent, industry job, but your contacts won't really be able to help you until your scripts are ready, which brings me to--

been reading a lot of scripts lately. there seems to be an order in which people develop their TV writing skills, and I can kinda tell where people are in their journeys (and where I am on mine!) based on which of these has been nailed and what still needs work: 🧵 ACT 1 - the gumshoe TV writer

1. dialogue: I think most people who aspire to write and have the innate chops have good instincts around this off the bat.

2. cinematic action: takes longer than dialogue to develop because action/description for the screen is pretty esoteric.

THREAD: A few years ago, a screenwriter who was giving me notes on a pilot asked me a question which totally up-leveled me as a writer...

He asked, what is the DRAMATIC QUESTION of your show? I'm a screenwriting nerd, but for whatever reason, I had not encountered this term before this moment, and I've never really heard anyone say it since. Maybe that's because people call it something else, or it's more of a theatre thing, but I really like it for film/TV.

THREAD: I've seen a few threads on this topic bouncing around lately, so thought I'd share my experience.

Three @austinfilmfestival's ago, I was at one of those roundtable things and received some wisdom from a screenwriter that totally changed my life. This is what she said: Start a WRITERS GROUP --

1. Keep it SMALL. ~5 people.

2. Meet EVERY WEEK to workshop each other's writing.

3. Everyone submits at least ONCE A MONTH.

4. SHUT UP AND LISTEN while you're getting feedback.

And

5. Don't go to draft until the GROUP APPROVES THE OUTLINE.

THREAD: IMO most screenwriters don’t name their files in a useful or even consistent way. Weird considering how neurotic we are about screenplay format.

Good filenames can save you SO MUCH heartache, esp when you’re returning to old projects or sending stuff out.

My method: NAME_PROJECT-PROJECT TYPE_DATE_VERSION

This is a contained, informative file naming convention that organizes your work for you.

I chose this particular order bc, when sorted alphabetically, I want my projects to self-organize by NAME, then PROJECT, then DATE, and then VERSION

How did you guys learn structure?

Found these coffee-stained scripts today when cleaning! I learned how to write TV scripts by writing specs. Before speccing a show, I would watch every episode 2-3 times, summarize them, then get three scripts and break them down like so: Then, I'd try to write a spec that matched the show tonally and story-wise, but also structurally. It was total overkill, but I feel like I really get 1/2 hour structure now while I still struggle with 1-hr because I never specced them!

just thinking about all the times someone told me I was pretty "for an indian girl" and I was like "thanks?" rather than "damn, that's really racist!" comments like that used to feel innocuous, but now they feel indicative of how skewed society's perception of beauty is and how a lot of people feel it becomes less and less probable the further we get from whiteness.