SYS Podcast Episode 005: An Interview With Screenwriter Paul T. Murray (Transcript)

This is a transcript of SYS Podcast Episode 005: An Interview With Screenwriter Paul T. Murray. Click here to listen or watch the original Podcast.

Transcript

Ashley: Welcome to episode 5 of the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast.
I’m Ashley Scott Meyers, screenwriter and blogger over at
SellingYourScreenplay.com. In this episode’s main segment, I’m
going to be talking with Paul Murray. He’s a writer, director
and actor and like myself he’s sold many scripts without an
agent or a manager and he tells us exactly how he did it in the
interview so stay tuned for that.

If you find this episode valuable, please help me out by giving me a
review in iTunes. I want to improve this podcast so some honest,
constructive feedback is very much appreciated. If you’re
watching this episode on YouTube or another online channel,
please like us and share it with your friends. It’s greatly
appreciated.

If you have a question or comment, you can leave it in the comment
section of YouTube or you can leave it in the comment section of
this podcast on my blog. I will try and answer any and all
comments.

I just want to give a quick shout out to some folks over at
YouTube who left comments on my last podcast episode. Thank you,
Ginger Shine, Adam Strange, Max K, Andy Spear, Patty S. and S
Rauli. That last episode was all about doing short films to try
and get some IMDB credits, and Patty had a question about how
all that actually worked.

As a writer, I’ve actually never created an IMDB listing. My
understanding is that IMDB has a certain criteria in order for a
film to get listed, but it’s fairly easy. I’m just not sure
exactly what it entails. I know it does change from time-to-
time, but the bottom line is that shorts are eligible to be
listed. There are a ton of shorts listed. In fact, one of my
credits is a short film.

The producers have a big incentive to get it properly listed.
They and everyone involved in the production want it listed on
IMDB, so the producers should take care of that.

I would say one thing you would want to do before you agree to
let someone shoot your short film is ask them what they plan on
doing with the short once it’s done. If they tell you they want
to get it submitted to film festivals and listed on IMDB, then
that’s probably all you can really do.

If they say something like I just want some footage for my
directing reel, that’s probably an indication that they’re not
going to spend a lot of time actually promoting the film and you
might consider not giving them your script. But in general, this
isn’t something as a writer you need to worry about. The
producers should take care of it and they should get it listed
on IMDB.

A couple of quick notes, any websites or links that I mention in
the podcast can be found in my blog in the show notes. I also
publish a transcript with every episode in case you’d rather
read the show or look at something later on. You can find all
the podcast show notes at
www.SellingYourScreenplay.com/podcasts.

Also if you haven’t already done it, sign up to get my free
guide, How to Sell Your Screenplay in Five Weeks. You can pick
that up by going to www.SellingYourScreenplay.com/guide. It’s
completely free. You just put in your email address and I’ll
send you a new lesson once per week for five weeks along with a
bunch of bonus lessons.

I teach the whole process of how to sell your screenplay in that
guide: how to write a professional log line and query letter and
how to find agents, managers and producers who are looking for
material. It really is everything you need to know to sell your
screenplay. Just go to www.SellingYourScreenplay.com/guide.

A quick few words about what I’m working on, I actually had
probably the luckiest break of my career this past week. I sold
a script. It’s a film noir script that I wrote several years
ago. I had optioned the script several times before, but the
producers could never quite raise the money for it. In this case
the producer has the money to make the movie, so he just flat
out bought it without optioning it first. He has a specific
actress that he’s been trying to find material for, and this
script had the sort of role that he wanted for her.

I’m going to have to do some rewriting on the project which is
normal, but hopefully not a lot. The producer got the screenplay
through a director who has one of my other screenplays optioned.
The director had read several of my screenplays and always liked
this film noir script.

The producer approached this director and told him he wanted to
make a movie with this actress, but he just needed the right
material for her. The director emailed me and told me what was
going on. I ended up sending him this film noir script along
with another one that I thought might work for him. The producer
liked the film noir script, called me up and our lawyers and the
deal knocked out in a few days.

I met this director late last year after doing one of my email
facts blasts for a horror comedy screenplay. The director is
actually not on my list. A producer read the horror comedy
script, liked it, but felt like it wasn’t for her. She was a
film with this director so she passed it along to him and he
liked it and he ended up optioning it. We ended up hitting it
off. He’s read a good number of my screenplays at this point, so
that’s basically how it all went down.

A couple of takeaways from this sale. I’ve written so many
screenplays that no matter what sort of script this producer
would’ve been looking for, I almost certainly would’ve been able
to submit something. And that’s important because in some ways
it really is a numbers game.

It’s like a roulette table. A number’s going to come up. I mean
there are going to be people making movies next year, and the
more screenplays you have, the more numbers you can cover and
the better chance you’ll have of having your number come up.

So it’s not just as simple as being in the right place at the
right time or writing a great script. I gave myself the best
possible chances to make this happen because I’ve been so
diligent for so many years and have so many completed
screenplays ready to go.

And the other big takeaway was that it all started with a cold
query letter. You’ve always got to be out there marketing your
screenplays. If you wait for your agent to call, you may be
waiting around forever. So now let’s get into the main segment.

Today I’m going to be talking with writer, director and actor
Paul Murray. If you have a moment, look him up on IMDB. He’s not
a household name but he certainly has some solid writing credits
and he’s very willing to share a lot of good information. So
here’s the interview.

Welcome, Paul, to the Sell Your Screenplay podcast. I really
appreciate you coming on today. I know you’ve got a wealth of
experience to share with us, so let’s dig right in and begin the
interview.

Paul: All right, let’s do it.

Ashley: So I guess the first thing is maybe you can give our listeners
a brief overview of how you started out in the entertaining
industry and kind of how you’ve arrived at the point that you’re
currently at?

Paul: Yeah, I grew up in the tough streets of South Boston and it was not a
normal thing to ever want to be an actor or comedian back in
those days. It’s something I just wanted to do, and I actually
started out in standup comedy in Boston in the late 70s and
early 80s and did some local theatre and things back there.
Eventually I moved out to L.A. and started producing plays. I
remember reading scripts that I thought I couldn’t believe grown-
up adults had written, and that made me want to write. I started
writing and I don’t know, 65 scripts later here I am.

Ashley: Is that right? You mentioned the late 70s, doing standup
comedy. That seems like it was sort of a golden age of standup
comedy. What was it about that scene that kind of attracted so
much talent?

Paul: I don’t know. It was in Boston. It’s just one of them things that
just kind of happened. I mean I wasn’t aware of it. I had
already moved out when a lot of the 80s boom went on, but Boston
just became a real haven for comedians and a few of my friends
like Steve Wright eventually went on to do The Tonight Show and
Boston became a very popular place.

Ashley: What specifically attracted you to becoming a standup comedian?

Paul: I don’t know, I mean I used to love Johnny Carson when I was a kid. I
used to love watching the comedians and stuff, and having grown
up in a very tough, blue collar neighborhood I just wanted to do
something different in life, something I loved, because life is
tough enough as it is. So I kind of went that way, and 31 years
later here I am.

Ashley: Okay, so one of the things we talked about a couple weeks ago
was like myself, all your screenplay sales have come through
your own marketing efforts and not through an agent or a
manager. I’m sure you get this question quite a bit as I do.
What do you say to new writers who ask you how do I get an
agent?

Paul: Well, first and foremost, you have to learn and have had enough
writing experience to present a script to an agent. You just
have to be ready. You only get so many shots, so you don’t want
to put out an inferior script or product that you think is
ready. So you really have to know your business. You have to
workshop the scripts. You have to get advice from people in the
know, people in the industry, other writers, producers on when
something is ready. It’s the cart before the horse thing.

So make sure you’re ready. It’s a lot easier starting out . . .
at least present a high-concept script, something that is
marketable, something that is going to grab your attention in a
very short log line. That’s really the best advice. I mean years
later when you’re a well-known writer, you can write your
prominent opus for yourself. But early on, you have to . . . I
think it’s the commercials projects that draw attention.

Ashley: So can you give us maybe some kind of overview of how you sold
some of your scripts? Maybe take us back to your first feature
sale? Just give some nuts and bolts. I’m someone who really
learns just from seeing how other people actually did something,
a real nuts-and-bolts. I sort of . . . when I hear those
stories, I often can kind of take things away and apply them to
my own career. I’d be curious, what was your first feature sale
and how did you get that sale done?

Paul: Okay, I just want to touch upon too as far as the agency managers and
stuff, they’re not hard to find. Everybody knows where they are,
especially with the Internet access and everything. So all that
information is out there. The world has changed now, because in
the old days you had to call or drop by. There wasn’t Internet.
So a lot of that has changed, so people can submit log lines of
scripts from anywhere in the world today. So that part makes it
a lot easier.

Going back to how I got my first project sold, I’d written plays
and I’d moved on and then short films and had written a bunch of
feature scripts. I was always out shopping them and plugging
them wherever I could.

Another thing I did that I thought was good was have the stage
readings of my scripts to the public. So therefore I would
invite producers, directors and so forth to come down and watch
a live reading with professional actors. To me it helped sell
the script better. And the most important thing, it created a
buzz because that’s what it’s all about in this town: creating a
buzz about your script and your work.

So I would do that with a lot of scripts because I came out of
theatre and I also had done it with plays and so forth. At the
time, my first script, it was called “Guys Like Us” and I had a
reading over it in Hollywood. I invited some producers down and
had some great actors read it. It got a little bit of buzz and
interest, and in particular one producer, it reminded me of
Scott Dale’s brother Steve Dale. He really took an interest in
the script. He wanted to run with it for a while, so I let him
run with it.

Somewhere in-between then a film came out with the same title so
I had to change the name. I ended up changing it to Very Mean
Men. Eventually, at some point, at the American Film Market he
met an executive producer down there that had heard good things
about this script and he wanted to buy the script, which is kind
of strange, right there on the spot. Next thing I know they’re
calling me that night and saying this is what he’s offering. We
negotiated a price on the script and were sold like that.

Ashley: That’s great. I wonder if we could just take a step back and
kind of dig into this. You mentioned like building buzz. What is
sort of involved in building buzz? Is it getting the right
producers? Do you have a publicist? Do you have someone that
works for The Hollywood Reporter that can do a write-up on the
reading? How do you kind of build that buzz?

Paul: No, it’s tough to do that. They’re not going to do write-ups until
something’s usually produced, but you create a kind of buzz just
within your network of people and it takes a long time to put
together a network of people. If something doesn’t happen
overnight . . . I have done years of work doing plays, shorts
and readings and things so I felt a little bit of a following
and got a little bit of a reputation as a good writer and so
forth. So this, you know, I got that out there. It’s all about
the buzz. They heard it was a great script and they wanted it,
so we wound up . . . go ahead.

Ashley: Yeah, so I’m looking at your IMDB page. It came out around
2000, so this would’ve been . . . I mean as you said, you’d been
working for years as an actor, as a playwright, so you had this
network of people. Do you just send out an email to everybody
and say listen, I’m doing this stage reading? Do you call
people? What’s sort of the logistics of getting people out? I
know a lot of friends are in plays and musicians. In L.A. it’s
very difficult for people to actually come back . . .

Paul: Well again, back then, first of all the script was written in 1995 in
a group I had formed. We made short films and so forth, and the
reading was, I don’t know, probably somewhere around 1996. The
movie was not made until 1999, the end, going into 2000.

Back then, again, we didn’t even have computers and such. You
basically had to call people up and hand out little post cards
and flag people down. It was a lot harder. Either way, you got
people to come out and you got excitement about the script. You
created that buzz and that buzz fortunately turned into a sale
then the movie was made, I don’t know, about four or five months
after that. It all happened very quick.

Ashley: So in terms of some of the logistics, again, you had been a
playwright so it sounds like you kind of knew like the theatre
owners. But how much would someone have to pay to rent the
theatre for the night? Did you pay the actors? Again, you had a
network of actors so you probably could get them cheaply or for
free?

Paul: Yeah, I had the actors for free. You always can pay a little bit for
a theatre. Sometimes you’re a member of a theatre and they’ll
give it to you for free or you rent one and you have to do
things in order to entice people down. You’ve got to offer free
booze and food and things like that which we always did. So I
would do gimmicks like that to get people to come out. I would
get the best actors that I possibly could, and a great
narrator’s always important in screenplays because you don’t
want it to drag on.

There’s also two different versions of this script too as far as
when you’re doing a reading script you have to cut out a lot of
the boring narrative to make it really move like a play, so
there’s always tricks that you do to keep their attention. This
fortunately worked . . . and right prior to this, I was hired to
write another small script that got made literally a month
before Very Mean Men. That same producer hired me right after
Very Mean Men to write this other movie called The Black Rose.
So after many years of banging my head against the door, I wound
up having three feature films made in six months.

Ashley: I see. And this other one, that was the Claddagh Ring?

Paul: The Claddagh Ring, no, that was a short that I had done. The other
one was called Running from the Shadows. It and Very Mean Men
were actually done almost simultaneously and then I wrote a
script from scratch for the same producers at the beginning of
the year after Very Mean Men had wrapped. Literally we started
filming that movie the second the script was finished. That was
kind of a nice feeling knowing what you’re writing is going to
get filmed because that’s very rare.

Ashley: Yeah, yeah. So just tell me about this producer who optioned
Very Mean Men. Was that someone who knew you through your
playwriting? So he already knew you were a very good writer
which is why he showed up at this reading of the script? What
was your relationship with him before the reading?

Paul: I’d known him through friends. I’d probably sent him some stuff; he’d
seen some of my plays. I had formed a group called Renegade Film
Artists where we were making short films at the time and he
wound up actually being a member of it. At that point, I decided
to write a script based on a lot of the characters and actors
and stuff that I knew around them. Originally it was probably
going to be a smaller movie. He really loved it and stuck with
it, and like I said, he wound up selling it to an executive
producer at The American Film Market that had heard about it and
had millions of dollars. So that, again, happens pretty quickly
in just a matter of months from the sale of that script to when
they started filming of it.

Ashley: Okay, so maybe move on to some of the other projects and maybe
give us a view. So it sounds like that one producer, really you
were able to parlay the good relationship into three script
sales. What about some of the others like Scorched and Cruel
World? How did you get those sold?

Paul: Scorched and Cruel World were also a friend of mine who was the first
AD in a lot of TV shows from Vancouver. He had put a company
together and was always good at hustling and getting money.
That’s what it’s all about, getting money. He did Scorched for a
very low budget. It’s something he . . . I wrote it very quickly
so he could go and shoot, and he did that. Then several years
later his company was able to get more money and they hired me
to write Cruel World. They were very genre-specific. They wanted
a certain thing, and they were able to get the money from that I
believe with the help of the New Mexico Film Commission which
gave them incentives to film there cheaply. And so they
eventually hired Edward Furlong and Jamie Presley to film that
movie.

Ashley: I see. Then how did you get into Boiler Maker? You directed
that one as well, correct?

Paul: Yes, Boiler Maker is kind of similar to Very Mean Men. I had written
a script. I knew a couple of producers, and again I went and
rented a theatre. I brought in great actors. I had a packed
house. The script read very well. I almost had two producers
fighting over it at that point which is kind of what I wanted. I
think that’s a good, clever move to do. You have to make them
make the decision. So if you don’t take it, he’s going to take
it. And in that instance, they were almost going to combine
efforts but it didn’t work out. It still took another eight
months or so, they were trying to raise money for it but that
wasn’t working out, but one of the partners that they had was in
real estate and he decided just to put up all the money himself.
That was great.

Ashley: And you had done enough directing in the theatre world that
they were confident you could direct a feature film?

Paul: Yes, but I also gave them incentive on that. I said you’ll pay for
the script but I’ll direct it on the cheap since it’s my first
thing. So I had known these guys well and they believed that I
would be able to execute it well.

Ashley: Okay, then what about your most recent credit, What Doesn’t
Kill You? How did you get that one going?

Paul: That’s a longer story. What Doesn’t Kill You was written in 2007. I
had bumped into an old friend of mine from my hometown and he
was connected with a producer that liked his work and he had a
life story. So I met with him and Donnie Wahlberg and they
brought me on to write the script with them because they weren’t
real writers. That script was written but it took like seven
years for that to eventually get made.

Ashley: Right?

Paul: And it was just coincidence that Boiler Maker and What Doesn’t Kill
You were actually filmed simultaneously. What Doesn’t Kill You
was done in Boston and I directed Boiler Maker out in L.A. at
the exact same time which was pretty cool.

Ashley: Yeah, yeah.

Paul: So that . . . that script had a pretty well-known producer that gave
it to almost every actor in town at some point to read from Sean
Penn to Kevin Bacon to Matt Dillon, etc. It just took aligning
the right two actors in order to get that green lit and it
finally happened when Mark Ruffalo and Ethan Hawke had the time
to do it.

Ashley: I see, I see. And this Brian Goodman who directed it, he’s the
one that sort of originated the story and brought that to you?

Paul: Yes, it was his life story. He grew up in my hometown. We actually
bumped into each other when I was filming Very Mean Men. We met
later, a few months after that, after that was finished. He had
told me about this story of his life that he had. They
unfortunately paid some novice to write it who couldn’t write
and butchered the thing. It was just terrible. So we basically
threw that script in the trash and I sat down with them and said
okay, let’s start from scratch here. Tell me about your life and
so forth.

It’s always challenging to condense a two-hour movie from
somebody’s entire life, so what are the highlights? What is
going to stay? What is structurally going to make this story
work? And so those were the things that I really focused on and
were able to execute. Then there were a lot of torturous years
of waiting for the right actors to agree.

Ashley: Yeah, yeah. So I guess you’ve done a lot of acting too. Do you
consider yourself more of an actor than a writer? More of a
writer than an actor? Where do you sort of see yourself?

Paul: Well, originally I definitely saw myself as an actor first and
foremost. I definitely got into writing by accident. I didn’t
even have any great writing skills with grammar. It was just
something I learned to get good at, and I was always great with
characters and dialogue. I grew up around certain elements and
it’s just something that took a long time for me to hone and be
good at. It’s a craft and I’ve got it down to almost like an art
form I think at this point in time. But every script as you’re
going through it is a unique challenge.

I’ve gotten more successful as a writer so I’ve gone that way,
but in Very Mean Men for instance I also wrote myself a great
role back then. Even though there were ten great roles, I made
sure I had one, so you know . . .

Ashley: How much do you think your acting has helped your writing?

Paul: Oh, it certainly helps a lot, especially . . . well definitely in
writing, but most crucially on directing because you have to
know how to communicate and deal with actors. You’ve got to know
what makes them tick and where they’re coming from. They react
different and approach the work and material differently, so you
have to know how to work with them. They’re very sensitive
creatures. So my acting experience helped out tremendously on
that.

Ashley: I wonder too, I’ve never done any acting so I’m always curious,
as an actor are there some things that you’ve seen in
screenplays that just make you cringe? Some sort of common
mistakes that actors just hate?

Paul: Yeah, well I see it in screenplays and movies. Number one, in
screenplays, the narrative is just so overwritten to me. Again,
it’s like interior bar, Joe and Wally walk in the bar . . .
we’re already in the bar, you know. You just say Joe and Wally .
. . and don’t use a lame word like walk; they stagger in. Give
them something.

And the other thing, the worst thing I see, is the bad along-the-nose
dialogue where characters are just saying things for exposition.
It’s just terrible. Characters never say what’s on their mind,
you know? If you write them clever, they’re clever. They’re
smart and they’re always trying to outfox the other character so
they’re never really saying what’s on my mind or what’s on their
mind.

They are always conniving or manipulating or whatever. It
depends on what the story is, of course, but they’re not saying
what’s on their mind even in a romantic comedy, a relationship
between a boy and a girl. They’re always playing this cat-and-
mouse game. It’s creating the great subtext that is underneath
the dialogue. It’s almost more important what they don’t say.

Ashley: So I really appreciate your time and coming on the podcast. I
wonder if you just have any parting words or advice for
screenwriters who are trying to get their first couple credits?
Do you have anything that you can share that they can do, put
into action and try and get their careers going?

Paul: Well yes, writing like anything else in the world, the more you do it
the better you get at it. You have to be disciplined and you
have to get in there and do it. You have to create the time to
write and you have to write. The only way you get good at it,
like anything else . . . there’s the thing we call the 10,000
hour rule in life and it applies to any business. It almost
takes that amount of hours to be successful and great at
something. People have to be willing to put that many hours into
whatever their chosen profession is and just be relentless and
don’t take no. Believe in yourself and know that you have it and
truck on, man.

Ashley: Yeah, well great, great. I really do appreciate you coming on.
Thank you very much.

Paul: Okay, thank you.

Ashley: I just want to talk about a few things that Paul said. The
thing that most impresses me about Paul, and this is not just
from the interview but also from meeting him, is just how
devoted to his craft he is. Listening to him tell his story,
doing standup comedy, writing, directing and acting in plays for
years; being a working actor throughout all of this and writing
65 screenplays, it’s actually not surprising that he has sold so
many scripts because he really put in the work and years of
effort. Specifically, he talks about doing these live readings
of his screenplays and it’s worked for him on more than one
occasion.

Here’s the thing, that’s not a beginner strategy. He talks about
how to build up a reputation as a playwright. He knew a lot of
great actors to cast and he’d build a list of contacts of people
to invite to the readings. That’s not something you can do
overnight. Obviously just doing a reading of your screenplay in
the theatre is not going to work unless you’ve laid the
groundwork, but that’s the point: you’ve got to lay the
groundwork.

Paul just told us exactly how to be a screenwriter. Work hard in
theatre as a writer, director or actor for more than a decade
and then you’ll be in a position to write and sell screenplay.
So anyways, I hope you found the interview helpful. I know I
did. It’s inspiring to me to see someone have success who really
deserves it.

Paul is going to be teaching a class at the Selling Your
Screenplay Select Program on Saturday, November 23rd at 10:00
a.m. Pacific Time. He’s going to be teaching a class called
“Writing Actor Bait: How to Write Scripts that Actors Will Want
to Star In.”

One of the keys to getting your screenplays produced is
attracting top-name talent to it, and this class is going to
cover everything you need to do to write a script that actors
will love. I’m looking forward to it too as I’m sure there’s a
ton of stuff that I can learn from Paul. To learn more about
this, go to SellingYourScreenplay.com/classes.

These monthly classes are all included in the Selling Your
Screenplay Select Program. In addition to the classes, there are
a whole host of other services that I offer like a monthly
conference call where you can ask any questions about
screenwriting that you’d like. To learn more about this, just go
to SellingYourScreenPlaySelect.com.

On the next podcast episode I’m going to be interviewing my good
friend Mark Heidelberger. He’s a producer, UPM and development
consultant. He was my literary manager for years and really
helped me become a better writer, so I know from firsthand
experience that he really knows script development. He’s
produced two of the films that I’ve written as well. He’s going
to be breaking down the new Matthew McConaughey movie Dallas
Buyers Club. It’s going to be a great chance to see a screenplay
broken down by a professional producer.

In this episode’s Writing Words segment, I’m going to hopefully
tie a few loose ends together. There’s a quote that I’ve heard
countless times since moving to Hollywood, and that quote is
“The overnight success took ten years.” Becoming a good
screenwriter, or really getting good at anything, takes a
really, really long time. It’s a really long journey so you’ve
got to really enjoy the process.

And Paul laid out what that process was for him. It was doing
standup comedy, working in theatre and working as an actor for
more than a decade. What I talked about last week on the podcast
was how to write short films and get them produced. That might
be one part of your process.

The first script that I wrote that got produced was a film
called Reunion. It was basically me and a few friends shooting a
feature film on a shoestring budget. But you know what? It was
actually the most fun, rewarding experience I’ve had as a
screenwriter and I learned a ton. I was a producer on the
project so I had a ton of creative input on every part of
production, and I even ended up editing it so I even had final
cut too. That was part of my process.

If the actual process of becoming a screenwriter doesn’t sound
like something you’re interested in, that’s totally fine.
Screenwriting isn’t the be-all, end-all. There are plenty of
other meaningful, fulfilling things you can do with your life.

Now I have no doubt that at some point someone’s going to listen
to this podcast, ignore everything I say and still go on to
having a great screenwriting career. There are a lucky few,
supremely talented people who just have to show up and they’ll
get recognized because their talent is just so fantastic. Good
for them; I wish I was one of them.

I’m sure most of the people that listen to this podcast think
that they’re in that camp. A few people will succeed with this
sort of lottery mentality, but that’s not what I’m trying to
teach. What I’m trying to do here at Selling Your Screenplay is
give people a realistic template for pursuing screenwriting
without a lot of luck and without being supremely talented.

I believe that most people who listen to this podcast can have
at least some success as a screenwriter but few actually will.
And it’s not writing talent that’s going to separate the winners
from the losers; it’s persistence and hard work. It’s these
small baby steps, the long, steady process that add up to a real
screenwriting career.

So instead of emailing me and asking me questions like how do I
get an agent or can you sell my screenplay for me, take a step
back and figure out how you can write and produce a short film
or see if there’s a local theatre group you can join or try and
find a local coffee shop that has an open mic night for standup
comedians and go do some standup comedy. These are concrete,
manageable, realistic steps that will help you on your path
towards becoming a professional screenwriter.

I want to be clear, there is no one size fits all plan that will
work for everyone but the bottom line is you’ve got to figure
out some sort of process for working on your craft that works
for you. Hopefully my blog and podcast is helping you do that. I
suspect it’s going to take a lot more work than most people
imagine, but if you enjoy the process it’s not going to feel
like work. It’ll hopefully be fun. So that’s it for this
episode. Thank you for listening. I hope you found this episode
useful.