This is a transcript of SYS 462 – CSI: How To Write True Crime With Jennifer Dornbush .
Welcome to Episode 462 of the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I’m Ashley Scott Meyers, screenwriter and blogger with sellingyourscreenplay.com. Today, I am interviewing screenwriter Jennifer Dornbusch. She is a Screenwriter with a background in Forensics. She’s written in the crime genre and has actually written a book called Forensic Speak – how to write realistic crime dramas. So, we talk about her own writing career, but also dig into some very practical tips for screenwriters who want to make their crime writing a little more authentic. So, stay tuned for that interview.
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Ashley
Welcome, gentlemen to the selling your screenplay podcast. I really appreciate you coming on the show with me today.
Jennifer
Thank you.
Ashley
It is good to have you here. So, to start out, maybe you can tell us a little bit about your background. Where do you grow up and how did you get interested in the entertainment industry? And specifically, forensics?
Jennifer
Sure, okay. I’ll try to do it really fast. It’s a lot because it’s a long circuitous road. But I was born in Western Michigan in a small rural community. And I was a writer since I was a kid. I was that kid who would like, you know, write little plays, and then force my sisters and the neighborhood kids to you know, play the parts. So, when I grew up and left town and went to Chicago for college, I studied literature, I studied rhetoric. I actually went out to LA for an internship because I knew that I wanted to write in, like, write for the masses, so to speak. But I had no idea what that looks like. So, I got this opportunity to do an internship in LA. And that was a long time ago when dinosaurs roamed the earth. And I didn’t feel it, I kind of ran from my calling for about 10 years and went back to Chicago did lots of other wonderful things, worked in journalism and public relations, taught high school, taught college, moved around a bit. And then I found out about an amazing program called Act One Writing for Hollywood, and it was exactly what I had been looking for. So, on the, you know, cusp of 30, when everybody’s like, what am I doing with my life? I was like, yeah, what am I doing with my life? I wanted to write, I need to do that. So I went through the program, and it changed my life, it completely turned my trajectory. And we, husband and I moved to LA so that we could really immerse ourselves in the industry and I could really start taking it seriously. And that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.
Ashley
Okay, so just go back for a second. What was the name of that program? And is it still around? Is it something people can still go and check out?
Jennifer
It is still around, it’s called Act One Writing for Hollywood. And they run summer programs specifically for, you know, adult learners who, you know, have jobs and need to work while they’re also. And it’s all taught, it’s very hands on, it’s all taught by industry professionals. So, it’s not just your professors who are, you know, these are people who are still working very actively and successfully in the industry.
Ashley
Gotcha. I’m curious to, just to hear your thoughts on working in PR, working in journalism, obviously, you’re writing a lot is not necessarily creative writing, but you are writing and one thing I’ve definitely noticed, I sell a number of services to screenwriters, a blast service, and this and one of the things I really try and tell people is the people that have had this success with my services. Truthfully, they come from either a writing background, journalism, PR, or they come from an entertainment as it’s very unusual. I’m not saying it’s never happened, but it’s very unusual that someone just uses my blast service, gets an option, sells a script. People have done that. But generally, when you look at their background, there’s quite a bit behind them. It’s not just sort of a one-off thing. And I’m curious, how do you look back on now, as you’re moving into screenwriting and writing scripts, that journalism and PR background is concise writing is real thoughtful. And so, there’s a lot of parallels, but just what are your thoughts on that as a background?
Jennifer
Wow, that’s so interesting. Actually, I’ve never heard anybody say that. But I guess it makes a lot of sense. Even when I look around at the people, I know who’ve had success. So, I was a storyteller, right? So, if you’re a journalist, or you’re working in public relations, or marketing, you’re telling the story of that company, or you’re telling and obviously, journalism, it’s storytelling. It’s just storytelling. So, I think everything I did, I feel like nothing that we do in our life is ever wasted. And all those years of training all those fears of having to interview people and go do quick deadlines, and write succinctly, write descriptively and succinctly. And then even like, PR marketing is really helpful when you’re trying to sell your work. But yeah, it’s all helped me. None of it was wasted. And yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, yeah, I’m a storyteller. So, whether I’m telling a business story or yes.
Ashley
Yeah, so just briefly, let’s talk about your first feature, film credit – God Bless the Broken Road. Again, just quickly, how did you ultimately get involved with this project? How did you get it sold?
Jennifer
Right. It’s funny story, because I’m mostly a crime writer. And mostly in that genre. But I had met this guy, we had worked together at a production company, and he’s the director. And we just became friends were from the same area in Michigan. And we just really clicked and fast forward, I don’t know how many years, he called me up and said, hey, I have this idea for this film. Do you want to write it? And honestly, that’s how it happened. So, it was not a genre that I had really written in before, because it’s more of like, inspirational, you know, very heartwarming genre. Not that crime isn’t heartwarming. You know, it was very different genre. And so yeah, we sat down, and we wrote it, and got it produced, yeah.
Ashley
So again, give me your perspective as someone who moved to LA, do you think a project like this ever would have worked if you were not living in LA? And just talk about some of that, do you think it’s in this day and age? I mean, we’re doing this via Zoom. So definitely, you can do things now very remotely, it’s very standard. But do you think that’s the right move for someone who wants to be a screen writer? And now that you’ve made the move to LA, what are your thoughts on that?
Jennifer
Right, it’s so interesting, because I part of me doesn’t know anymore. Because of the way COVID has changed the world and how we work. I know. And I landed there many, many years ago, it was absolutely essential. And all the relate and I never would have met this director had I not moved there. And he actually only moved there for a short time to he went back to Michigan. But I do think everything is done by relationship. And so, there’s never been a time where I’ve gotten a job that did not involve a relationship I built and most of those, if not all of those, probably I think almost all of those if I think about it were built in Los Angeles. I don’t know. I feel like the jury’s still out yet on what the landscape is now because you’re right, everything I do now is via Zoom. Relationship relationships I’m building now. And people I’m working with now. We’ve never actually met in person, it’s seems to be working.
Ashley
No, I agree.
Jennifer
Everybody’s thoughts on this.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah. No, I agree. I agree. I think the jury is still out on that. So, let’s dig into your book Forensic Speak – How to write realistic Crime Drama. Maybe to start out just tell us what is sort of the gist of this book. What is this book all about?
Jennifer
So, I grew up in a forensic home. My father was a medical examiner, and the office was in our house. So, I was really exposed to this forensic crime type of world really, since I was a kid, very, very young. And it was we learned a lot sort of at the kitchen table. Maybe too much. That’s up for a psychologist to debate. But when I started to connect my writing to my life, I realized I knew all this stuff. I know it’s by osmosis when you grew up with it, but all of the ideas and things that I was gravitating towards had to do with like mystery and crime and this forensic procedural world and I found oh, wait, I guess I do know, I guess I know about this. But I’ll tell you what I decided to do. I’m like, okay, I know about this. But forensics is a huge field and I also at the same time as a writer, I’m sure other writers have said this too, like you really have to do something to set yourself apart. Because there’s tons of us out there. And it’s not enough to be a great writer, you have to set yourself apart by Who are you like, what’s your brand, and it became evident to me that this was what I knew. And this was what was setting me apart. So I went back to school, I went to the Los Angeles Forensic Science Academy about I think it’s more like 12 years ago now, because I wanted to learn more. And I wanted to really be more fluid in forensics, I guess, and had changed, you know, things are constantly developing and changing. And this book, to graduate, this book was a result of just graduation, like I needed to do produce a project in order to graduate. And I was the only person in this class of 50, who was a writer, everybody else were like cops or, you know, going into biology or into actually practicing in the field of forensics. And I was just, you know, not just but I was doing for academics. And so, our professor, I asked; can I just create this Handbook for Writers where I basically, it’s kind of like a forensic bootcamp, because I couldn’t really find anything like that out there that was very succinct and yet thorough, but yet easy to grasp. And so, they said; Yeah, do it. So, the book was actually a result of my friends pushed me to publish it. I contacted my co-EC, we see when they were they were having like a call for submissions for ideas or books. And one of my friends sent me the link and she’s like, you need to publish that book. Like, no, I’m not. It’s just… it’s no. And she’s like, just do it. I’m like, fine. So, I wrote an email. And 30-minutes later, they’re like, we love this. Let’s talk.
Ashley
So, give us some highlights. What are some highlights from the book? Just some practical tips that can help writers.
Jennifer
Okay. So, it is a forensic bootcamp in a book. So, it covers the eight major branches of forensic science, like there’s a whole chapter on DNA. So really just going down to the basic, what is DNA? How is it collected? What can we get from it? What can’t we get from it? Where do we find it? How do you process it? How long does it take to process? There’s a whole book on blood spatter, so not splatter, but spatter. So, what kinds of spatter are there? What are the patterns they make? If it makes this pattern, does is it low, high or medium velocity does so does that mean you know the suspect was running or walking,
Ashley
And you’re saying splatter and spatter. So, we’re sort of the layman, we say it wrong. We say blood splatter as if it’s splatter, but it’s actually wrong, you’re saying.
Jennifer
Right. So, it’s really just semantics. Like splatter is a verb. So, like spatter is the noun.
Ashley
Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. So, there you go. Yeah, we got one tip right there. What are some big mistakes that you see writers do over and over again? Are there some things that you see in TV shows all the time you think they got this wrong again? Maybe there’s some highlights of mistakes that you notice.
Jennifer
It’s so funny, I actually teach a whole class on this. But in the end, yes, there’s mistakes they make, but there’s very good reasons for it. So, I don’t want to like disparage our industry, because there are reasons why we have to do certain things, like one of the biggest things, misnomers or mistakes, or faux pas, I guess, is time crunching. So, like, oh, they go to the scene and they get this, this little sample of a hair and they run it to the lab and five minutes later, you have results. It’s a misnomer. That’s not how it works. It takes weeks and weeks and weeks. And sometimes you can’t get things off of, you know, the samples are degraded, or there’s not enough. So, there’s all kinds of things that get wrong, but there’s good reasons for like, I can’t have a crime take eight weeks when we’re watching TV shows.
Ashley
Yeah. So, where do you draw the line on that? You know, entertaining versus, you know, being factually correct. Just what’s your own philosophy and your own writing?
Jennifer
Yeah, my philosophy is research, research, research, because truth is much stranger and more interesting than fiction. And often you will find a workaround, like if you’re trying to cheat it, or you’re just being lazy, which we’ve all been there, but actually just taking a few extra moments or extra time to really research something, I have found 10 times out of 10 gives me something way more interesting for my story than I ever even dreamed possible. So, just bite the bullet, take the extra step research.
Ashley
Yeah. Now as someone who’s an expert at this, how do you know if you’re going too far like past what the layman is speaking up. And I give you an example from Aaron Sorkin social network. I’ve done a lot of programming in my time. And so, there were moments in that movie where they start talking about the programming. And number one, it was clear to me as a programmer, they don’t really know what they’re talking about. But again, just exactly what you’re saying. I think there’s some good, I mean, obviously, Aaron Sorkin is a brilliant writer. So, I think there’s some good reason for what he did. He simplified it in a way. And so, I often, you know, the experts in the field, we’re not necessarily making these programs for experts in the field. And if you are an expert, sometimes you just will be taken out of the movie. But where do you again, where do you sort of draw the line with that pushing further into the truth? And you’re such an expert, you know things that, frankly, probably most people wouldn’t even be interested in.
Jennifer
I mean, a couple of things, because yeah, I’m in total science nerd, too. So, like, I can go really way too deep. So sometimes my writer’s group will tell me, you don’t need this, this, we don’t know what you’re talking about. You need to simplify this, or my editors, because I write novels as well. So sometimes I’ll get the feedback from other readers, you know, I’ll say, oh, wait, the other kind of not a cheat. But the other helper, I guess I tried to do is if I feel like I’m getting too technical, or I really want to get technical, because sometimes there’s good reasons to get back and you need to have like another character, explain kind of, you need to have that character work it through. So, like, if the person who’s talking about something really technical, that person needs to be challenged by another character, to explain it. So, they really, I guess, in a sense, represent the audience at that point. So, if you do want to go technical, which I think is kind of cool sometimes, and sometimes necessary, and also makes your investigator look really smart. But then you just need to have that other entity, that character who’s representing us who may not know what they’re talking about.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah. So obviously, your book is a great resource for this. But what are the resources exists, and I’m curious, like, if as a writer, if I reach out to like, an actual policeman or a retired policeman, what have you found in terms of just the reception approaching people in the crime, you know, law enforcement and asking questions, telling them, I’m a writer? Well, how do you approach people, and what have you found your reception talking to people like that?
Jennifer
I 100% endorse it, especially the retired ones. And I have found very warm reception, I found even people coming to me saying, if you need anything, or hey, keep me in mind, especially the retirees love to talk about what they’ve done. And I think it’s kind of cool, we kind of owe them that in a sense to like, tell me your stories, like you lived this life. You’re the wise one here. Let’s hear about it. So, I’ve found really good reception. And I think to some of the more interesting things that I’ve gotten from my stories have come from actually talking to a person who worked in that field rather than just going on Google and researching it or picking up a book. There’s some great tons and tons of great resources out there. Some of them are a little more technical, some of them are a little more less technical.
Ashley
Any tips on how to find these retired law enforcement people? Can you go on Facebook and somehow search groups? Like what are some tips?
Jennifer
You know, I always say like, start with your community around you. I mean, I can’t throw a stone and not hit a fireman or a police officer or off a lot of times. You know, I’m sure there’s somebody in your community, even if it’s once or twice to remove that know someone. Your city might have a community liaison who works for the police. A lot of times that happens or even like in LA, I believe the coroner’s office has a person like this to their, you know, a liaison to the people. And that’s it’s almost like a PR department. And that’s a good place to start. There is an online resource, check crimescene.io. I think it’s kind of a weird name, but it’s one of those groups that you can join a community and it’s any question people have about anything in this world. So, there’s tons of experts that are a part of this and that’s a nice kind of very quick online resource of people who are experts and the writer. It is built for writers and I can give you that address.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah. Well, I’ll email you follow up. Yeah, we’ll get that for show notes, for sure. But that sounds like a great tip. So, are there some examples out there of movies or TV shows that you’ve seen over the last year or two that are really do this well, they do the forensics really, really well? Just some good screenwriting examples you could recommend to our audience.
Jennifer
Okay, so this is going to sound super nerdy. But I have been watching this French show called Baltazar. Now it is in French, but he’s a medical examiner in Paris. And I think I’ve really enjoyed watching the authenticity, was very interesting show, but the authenticity of how he… and the variety of cases too. So, I think that’s a really cool show. And they they’re a little more authentic in their practices and techniques and equipment, then we are here in the US like, it just oh, yeah, that’s what a morgue should look like, not all glossy and everything. So, I really been enjoying that one. There’s, I don’t know, I’m stuck on these French shows right now. But there’s another one called Candice Renoir, which is; She’s a mom of four. And she’s a police detective in a smaller French town, but they do a really great job to have. It has a little more comedy to it. No, it’s not a comedy, but it has a little more lightness to it. And they do an amazing job of how a crime following trails of evidence, which is really when we’re writing these things that’s like foundational, you have to figure out your case file, your trails of evidence. And that show does a great job. If you just were to jot down all the trails of evidence and suspects and things that they follow, it’s a really good learning tool, I think. Even if you don’t speak French, there are subtitles.
Ashley
Yeah, perfect. Yeah, those are great recommendations. So just to wrap up, maybe you can just kind of tell us how people can find out what you’re doing and where you’re at. Twitter, Facebook, a blog, anything from people sharing, I will also wrap that into the show notes.
Jennifer
Yeah, yeah, the hub is Jenniferdornbush.com. And that’s sort of the hub. You can sign up for my newsletter there, and I’m on Instagram and Facebook and all that’s on the website.
Ashley
Perfect. Perfect. I will round that up for the show notes. How can people find your book? Where’s your book available?
Jennifer
Everything on Amazon. They are everywhere, wherever books are sold, by yeah.
Ashley
Perfect. Perfect. Well, Jennifer, I really appreciate you coming on and talking with me today. Good luck with this book and all your future projects.
Jennifer
Thank you so much.
Ashley
Thank you. We’ll talk to you later. Bye.
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On the next episode of the podcast, I’m going to be interviewing Tim Sutton who just did a rock and roll drama called Taurus starring Colson Baker, aka Machine Gun Kelly, we talk about how this movie came together for him as well as his career and how he got his start making these sort of very moody, very toned drama films, so keep an eye out for that episode next week. That’s the show. Thank you for listening.