Why I'm Teaching A Finding Your Voice As A Screenwriter Class
Because I Wish Someone Had Taught It to Me
Right around the time I started writing this Substack last year is when I started fooling around with the idea of creating a screenwriting course. I’ve been developing it ever since and will soon be teaching a 6 week version for Sundance Collab which I’m very excited about.
I also have a HUGE announcement coming very soon that will include where you can take the full course on-demand in the near future (and some other super exciting things I can’t wait to share!)
As I’ve been prepping and fine-tuning the lessons, what often jumps out at me is how much I wish I had learned this stuff when I was getting started in this business. Despite having gone to film school twice, both undergrad UCLA and grad USC, no one ever taught me what it meant to have a voice and why I should use it.
Instead, I left feeling scared about the future and desperately trying to figure out what were the ‘smart’ moves to make to get ahead. I wrote scripts for all sorts of reasons, but rarely was the main reason that it was something I was passionate about. I focused on commercial ideas, things I thought would sell, topics that were popular, all the while making sure to write them exactly the way I felt I was expected to. It was a valid approach, honestly. In most careers doing those things would lead you to success and even in this one it was often what was recommended.
I was trying to put myself into a box and then was devastated when, lined up with all the milliions of other boxes, I wasn’t chosen.
This all seems like obvious stuff now. Honestly, if I had tried to tell myself the flaws in this approach back then, I probably would have said, ‘yeah, yeah, yeah, following your heart is what you do AFTER you get in the door.’ I thought I was being realistic. I thought I was being shrewd.
Instead, I was just spinning circles in a box I was never meant to be in in the first place.
Finding my voice as a screenwriter ended up taking me a very long time. Mostly because I had to come to terms with the fact that what I had believed to be true, what I had thought was the path, was just a very practical and logical mirage.
The thing about screenwriting, whether people can admit it or not, is that it’s really a lot less about the business than we think. It’s just as much about ideas and feelings and creative revolutions as any other art form.
And, yeah. It is an art form. Just because it’s a ‘blueprint’ for a film, just because it eventually gets commodified and marketed and messed with in all sorts of ways by our capitalist society, what makes it desirable, what makes people want it in the first place? It’s the same reason they want to look at a painting or read a book or listen to piece of music. The kernel, it’s a piece of something REAL. It’s a piece of the artist, broken off and tucked away inside, and that magic shines through. Even after they cast Vin Diesel and put the poster on a bus stop.
That’s what I lost sight of the second I tried to ‘be’ a screenwriter. I allowed the business part of it to totally destroy why I had wanted to tell stories in the first place.
So, now, here we are. I’m finally doing it, I’m finally making a living writing screenplays, and it’s because I stopped trying to be smart. I stopped trying to listen to everyone. I stopped trying to figure out the ‘business.’ I just wrote what I wanted to. But, that wasn’t easy. And I still struggle with it all the time. Outside voices and the ones we’ve also internalized, guide us even when we’re determined to go our own way. It’s nearly impossible not to be influenced by what people think, or what you think you should think.
I suppose in that way I also developed this course for myself. It’s something I think you might never grow out of as a writer. Or, I haven’t anyway. This mess of getting tangled up with all of the things that don’t matter. I like to say, “No one wants to read a script that was inspired by your electric bill.” The thing is, it’s hard to forget about that electric bill, because it’s part of your life, and it’s LOUD.
So, I came up with some ways to get around that damn electric bill and get back in touch with the magic inside of you, not the stress.
I’ve broken it up into five classes:
Ease & Flow
Tone & Genre
Ideation
Theme & Character
Style
Each class we dive into why you want to tell stories, what excites you, and do exercises to help you find the things that truly inspire you. If you want to write, if you want to tell stories, then that means somewhere in there, you have something to say. ‘Finding your voice’ is learning how to get those pieces of you out into the world.
And then if they cast Vin Diesel, so be it.
I’m attaching below a handout for Paid Subscribers that includes two of the exercises I offer in the course to help you focus on what matters to you and what kinds of stories you love.