By Josh Krilov

 

It is often said that writing is re-writing. But even more important is de-writing: Deconstructing the work published in outlets to which you wish to gain access. When it comes to this process, Max Ross is a master.

His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Paris Review, American Short Fiction, The Common, The Los Angeles Review of Books, newyorker.com, and elsewhere. His stories have twice been shortlisted for the Pushcart Prize, and he has led writing courses at NYU and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

I spoke with Max in anticipation of his upcoming Fiction Bootcamp on 10/4 and hisShort Story Bootcamp starting 12/6.

 

1) Do you have different approaches to writing fiction vs. nonfiction?

My approach is at once identical and opposite. For both forms, I need to be sure there’s a solid structure in place, a sequence of scenes that, when put together, creates some sort of narrative. But the process of creating that structure differs quite a bit when I’m writing fiction versus when I’m writing an essay.

With nonfiction, I tend to write about things I’ve experienced in the recent past. It might be a family dinner, the death of a friend, or a soccer game I’ve gone to. Typically, immediately after the event, I’ll have some inkling that I want to write about it — and this inkling usually arises because I can ‘see’ the scenes that would need to be written in order for a narrative to emerge. I sense that I’ve received, almost without trying, all the material I need for a story. (Not to say that makes the writing much easier.)

With fiction, I rarely have any foreknowledge of what I want to write about. Usually I start with a character, or a scene, or a line of dialogue, with no idea of what’s going to come. There’s a lot of trial and error involved — “Would the character do this? No. This? No.” — and it’s kind of like playing with dolls. Each scene must be created from scratch.

 

2) Tell us about your journey as a writer.

My approach to getting published has been fairly pragmatic. (Insofar as deciding to write for a living can be called pragmatic.) I treated it like I would treat any other job, with the knowledge I needed to start from the bottom and work my way up — I didn’t have the chutzpah to start submitting things to The New Yorker from day one. I figured it would be a waste of time.

My first byline was in a little-known alt-weekly in Minneapolis. I interned for them, and they let me write a couple blurbs about things going on around town. Once I had a few clips, I figured I might try to get published in a slightly better-known alt-weekly — this was City Pages, which was then an affiliate of the Village Voice. I reviewed a couple concerts and interviewed a couple bands, and decided to aim higher: To write for The Star Tribune. I figured because I’d written for these other periodicals in town, they might pay attention to my pitch. I was lucky. They did.

And on and on. My process stayed the same for years — I would write a few pieces for one publication, and then use those as sample clips when querying an editor at another, better circulated outlet.

 

3) Is it hard to both write and edit?

When editing others, I try to be nicer than when I’m editing myself. That statement’s half true. The great task of editing is avoiding the tendency to turn every story into one of my own. It’s very tempting to revise others’ work as I would my own — to make their sentences like mine, to make their storylines adhere to my personal ideas of what a narrative should be.

This is a pretty small-minded approach, and usually benefits no one. So as an editor I suppose I feel more like a custodian, where the goal is to protect and burnish another person’s jewels and make them really shine.

I’m not afraid to remove fluff and garish pendants. But I’m not very willing to blow projects up, as I do to so many of my own.

 

4) Tell us about your creative process.

My creative process is decidedly un-creative. I try to be a workhorse. I write for an hour or two every morning immediately after I wake up. Then I go to my job-job. Then I try to squeeze in another half hour. When I’m stuck I read books I’ve read before and try to take what ideas from them I can.

 

5) What’s appealing about short fiction?

A good short story has something contraption-like about it. Reading stories by masters — Borges, Munro, Saunders, etc. — I feel the pleasure a marble must feel when going through a Rube Goldberg device. It’s so satisfying! I suppose at some point I wanted to be able to make others feel that feeling with my own work.

 

6) Endings are notoriously tricky for writers…

My first creative writing instructor was Hot Shot American Novelist Hero Dean Bakopoulos.

He once said short stories are approaching their ends when he can feel them circling back to their beginnings. The characters return to a point where they once were, but are changed (or not).

I was an impressionable student, and have continued to use this as my aim. It’s vague but it stands.

 

7) What do you consider the most important element for a short story?

The language and the plot are, for me, of equal value. I don’t have patience for poorly written stories, no matter how exciting or risque. But I don’t have patience for well-written pages-long descriptions of furniture, either. Things have to happen. But there must be some aesthetic pizzazz.

 

8) How does your approach change depending on what outlet you are writing for?

The general advice here tends to be the best advice — make sure you know the outlet you’re pitching well. A great essay or story might not be a great fit for every publication. It’s the writer’s responsibility to understand a given publication’s subject matter and voice.

 

9) What’s your biggest piece of advice for aspiring writers?

Don’t be afraid to steal moves from writers you admire. Read stories you like and pick apart how the authors introduce characters, or how long they spend describing a room, or how they manage the movement of time. Then rip it off. After doing this a few times you’ll develop your own methods.

 

10) What will you will cover in your Fiction Bootcamp class?

This will be a class that focuses on discrete skills. Line-editing is going to be one of them — we’ll be going over some published works and seeing if we can cut any extraneous words of phrases. My belief is that a writer must know how to edit himself or herself well in order to have success.

We’ll also be discussing how to structure plots, and taking a look at some short-shorts to see how masters do it. We’ll then steal from those masters and make our own short-shorts. Which can be expanded into long-shorts. Or long-longs.

Thanks so muck for your time and wonderful answers Max!

 

If you want to dip your toe into fiction, Max’s San Francisco Fiction Bootcamp starts on Wed. 10/4 and his Short Story Bootcamp starts Wed. 12/6.

An Interview With Phil Stark

By Josh Krilov

Is it your dream to spend your days sipping a latte while crafting jokes for TV’s funniest shows with some of the biggest stars in the biz on the studio lot?

Phil Stark has been a working scribe for 20 years, contributing to some of the industry’s top shows. He’s written for “South Park”, been the Co-Executive Producer for “That 70s Show”, and wrote the screenplay for “Dude Where’s My Car?” We sat down with him to ask him about how he did it, his creative process, and advice for beginning writers.

 

1) Tell us about your background, how you became a writer, and how you broke into the industry.

I’m from Texas, and moved here after college to try to become a screenwriter. I wrote features for a few years, then started writing TV comedy at night while working at cafes during the day.

My big break was getting a job as a production assistant on “South Park” before it premiered. A friend of mine was Matt and Trey’s assistant, and I came on board as a PA but they knew I was an aspiring writer. One day I was driving Trey somewhere and he was talking about how he was so busy and hadn’t finished a script he was writing, I offered to finish it, and he gave me the chance. They liked my work, and gave me another script to write, and soon I had a produced credit that helped me get my first agent.

 

2) What’s your biggest tip for aspiring writers wanting to write stories that stand the test of time?

Start with solid characters. Real characters. Characters who do things because those things are what that character would do, not what the writer needs them to do to service the plot. Then add jokes that are hilarious but more importantly that service the story and the emotions involved, not just funny for the joke’s sake. Make sure your story has a heart. If the audience cares about the arc your characters go through emotionally, they’ll buy into all the silly stuff that’s the icing on the cake of your story. In “Dude”, the dudes had this emotionally familiar story about trying to be good boyfriends. It’s not Shakespeare, but it’s an arc that we can empathize with, that makes them good guys, that makes you root for them. If the movie didn’t have any emotional arc and it was just Dude / Sweet tattoo scenes and random dogs smoking weed out of pipes… Well, it would still be pretty awesome. But having a story with heart and clear emotional arc will buy you a lot of silly gags.

 

3) “Dude Where’s My Car” starts with a simple escalating premise. How did this movie evolve?

“Dude” started as bunch of sketches about these two stoner dudes. The comedy and characters came out of those set pieces. Then it became about finding a narrative to put those pieces into. Then a good friend of mine told me a story about how he got so wasted one night he couldn’t find his car the next day. From there it all came together pretty quickly.

 

4) How do you find inspiration for your comedy writing?

I don’t ever feel like I’m running dry, comedy wise. The problem for me is finding ideas and characters to put into situations to use that comedy. If the comedy doesn’t come, then I know the characters or situations just aren’t right. Finding inspiration in concepts is something ethereal, it’s all around you.

An idea can be sparked by reading a newspaper article, in something that happened to you in real life, or even from seeing a tweet. I saw a tweet recently that was about Liam Neeson retiring from action movies. Well, there’s a movie right there! Liam Neeson tries to retire from action movies, but when on vacation he gets pulled into a real life one. Would be sort of meta, but still an interesting premise.

Sometimes ideas come not from story possibilities but from characters and relationships. You might have a family member or friend who has a relationship with someone, maybe you, that feels dramatic and compelling, and you might take note of what makes it feel that way and find a way to apply that to a premise you’re developing. Of course, if you do find inspiration in any way that leads to develop a story idea, you’ll know if it’s valid or not by how excited you get about it as you work on it. Sometimes ideas develop quickly with lots of potential into a script idea for you to write right away. Other times you get stuck, run out of steam, and then file it away in an idea folder that you can come back and revisit at a later date. Ideas are like plants, you have to water them, and they can’t be rushed!

 

5) What’s the #1 rookie writer mistake?

Ignoring the questions about your script that are hard to answer but easy to gloss over. What does your main character want? What is standing in his way? What is his plot driven story and what is his internal arc? How does he change by the end from how he was at the start? If you can’t answer these questions clearly it will be reflected in the script.

 

6) What’s your advice to aspiring TV writers for breaking into the biz & having a healthy career?

Keep writing. One of those scripts will be the one that someone reads and decides to hire you. Once you are working, you have to keep producing new material! It may surprise you how much you have to be your own agent. The agent’s job is to solicit work for you, but you always have to be hustling. This means networking! Which I used to think was a dirty word, but now I revel in it. I used to think it was tacky to talk to people about work things if i wasn’t really friends with them, I was worried they’d think I was using them or imposing on them. Now I just own it!

 

7) Take us through the process of selling a project.

Development is interesting. Two ways to go about it: develop your own material, or develop in an area that a producer already wants to develop. You should be prepared to go into a meeting with your own ideas to pitch, your passion projects, projects that mean a lot to you personally. But it’s also important to find out what producers want to develop, what areas they are interested in, and find something in those areas that you can apply your own personal experience to. When people say they want to hear your “take” on something, it means they like your style or manner or the way you’ve written something original, and want to see if you can bring that feeling to the projects they already want to do.

Pitching is funny. There’s the elevator pitch, and then the sit down on a couch pitch. One is just an area to explore, a situation, a character, a quick take. The other is about telling more of the story. But to tell more of the story, I need to know the whole story. So I typically do a lot of work to basically break the pilot story before I can pitch it. Then once I’m pitching it it’s about pulling back and not giving out all the information. Like, I might need to know exactly how a set of beats work to get a character to a certain point, but in the pitch, for brevity’s sake, I might say “and then there’s a set of events like x y and z that get our character to this place”. And if the producer asks how that would work, I’m ready to explain in more detail. You’re pitch shouldn’t devolve into a description of the plot (and then this happens, and then this happens, and then, and then). But you should be able to clearly state the emotional arc of your characters, this is more important than the plot.

 

8) What do you find to be the most valuable thing you’ve learned about re-writing?

Lose the ego. Step back and think about what’s best for the script. It can be hard getting notes that reflect negatively on something you have worked so hard on and are personally invested it. Some notes can feel like attacks on you. But it’s important to understand and master those feelings. The worst thing you can do is get defensive about a note on your script. Rise above that and see the note objectively. When you get into the production process, the notes can go from trying to make the script better, to trying to satisfy the many cooks that are now in the kitchen. You might have to change a scene that you think works as is in order to satisfy a producer, executive, director, or actor. It’s hard to figure out when it’s worth fighting for and when it’s not. That’s where you really have to leave your ego at the door. I’ve had experiences where I didn’t like a note, but instead of kicking and screaming about it, which will only make the people you’re working with think you’re difficult, I ran with it and tried to find a spark in the new scene, and then ended up with something I was really pleased with, and the producers were really pleased too. So realize that it’s a collaborative effort.

 

10) What was your biggest struggle early on in your career?

Rewriting! It’s so hard to look at a script you put so much work into, and realize that the way to make it better is to tear it apart and put it back together. But usually it’s the undeniable truth. It’s very easy to say to yourself “it’s good enough”. And sometimes it is. But you will know if your heart if it can truly be better, and that’s when you have to put in the work. I’ve read scripts and met beginning writers where this is very clear, and if the writer isn’t willing to do the work he already knows has to be done, that’s not someone I would hire. Remember: When you think you’re done, you’ve only just begun!

 

11) How do you create comedic opportunities?

Comedy opportunity is coming up with a premise that lends itself to conflict. For instance, the Odd Couple. Neat freak vs messy guy. Manners vs slob. Every single thing these two encounter has two very clear POVs that are in conflict with each other. If you have an idea where your main characters don’t have conflict, where does the funny come from? If they’re on the same team then the conflict can come from their interactions with others, but why not bake that conflict into the premise of your script? If you’ve got a type A lead, put them in a situation where they have to deal with a type B person.

If they’re responsible when it comes to money, have them hired by a boss who has no regard for a budget. If they just broke up with their girlfriend, have them hired for a new job they really want by the girlfriend’s mother. If they like the life they have now, put them in a situation where they have to deal with another character whose job is to change their situation. If the person is a racist, give them a minority new boss. People arguing = funny. People agreeing = not so funny. Conflict = comedy.

 

12) What can students expect to learn in your class?

Constructing a solid plot by developing your idea, defining your characters, establishing clear goals, and, creating dynamics that will lead to opportunities for comedy. Also, learning how to give and receive constructive notes.

 

Thanks so much, Phil! We can’t wait for your class.

 

An Interview With Sophia Kercher

By Nicole Erb

Ever dream of crushing the freelance beat? Meet Sophia Kercher. She’s written everything from deeply personal tales to researched pieces for huge journals. She knows what it takes to regularly be published in The New York Times, Elle, Variety, LA Weekly, Salon, and more. It takes guts, talent, persistence, and a dash of his girl Friday.

Sophia is teaching a journalism classes at Writing Pad Online in January. You’ll learn everything you need to know to craft honest, publishable essays, research articles or pitch editors. Until then, get to know Sophia!

1. Let’s start with your background? When did you start writing & how’d you break into the biz?

I grew up devouring books. I always knew I wanted to tell stories even when I was very young. I went to college at UC Santa Barbara where I started writing for my school newspaper’s arts section. The paper paid something like $35 an article, and I couldn’t believe I got paid to go see movies or bands that I liked and write about them—it felt too good to be true. Sometimes I still feel like that.

2. You’ve landed work in massive publications like the NY Times, Elle, Variety, and Salon. What’s one way to set your piece apart from the competition in the eyes of these prestigious places?

My strategy is what I call being an “idea machine.” I come up with as many story ideas as I can, research what outlet they would best fit in, and send pitches out into the universe (with my fingers crossed).

3. In addition to being a successful essayist, you’ve also been an editor and an editorial director. What is the most common mistake writers make when trying to make contact with an editor?

The most common mistake writers make is not following up. Editors are often balancing multiple projects at once and managing several different writers so it’s common for your email to get lost in the shuffle. Don’t be afraid to send a follow up email when you don’t hear back. And if you don’t hear back at all don’t take it personally, that means it’s time to send your essay or pitch to a new outlet.

4. One of the biggest challenges and most important aspects of the personal essay is a willingness to be vulnerable and exposed to your audience. How do you do it?

I still struggle with what I’m willing to share and what I’m not, but that tension is what makes writing personal essays exciting. My advice to writers is to keep a journal where they let their emotions spill out on the page. Don’t write on a laptop; use a good old-fashioned pen and paper. Don’t have to update your journal every day and don’t share it with anyone. Revisit the journal when you start your essay or you’re feeling stuck and need to remember the rawness of your feelings and how to describe them.

5. How do you approach personal pieces (your LA Times piece) vs journalistic pieces (NY Times)?

I’ve spent three months to a year and a half writing personal pieces. For me, personal writing takes patience. I tend to let personal stories sit for some time in order to add more depth, and distance from the story and its characters. Meanwhile, I can write a reported piece in less than a week and move on to the next project immediately. But I’m always surprised that some of my best writing can come from a tight deadline.

6. Any advice you have for aspiring journalists?

Find someone’s writing you admire that lives in your city and invite them out for coffee or tea and ask them about their career and writing process. You’ll be surprised.

So many people will be happy to meet with you. I still have journalist friends who I met this way. Also, go to parties. Some of my best new ideas come from talking to strangers at parties. It’s easy and fun.

7. The romantic friendship in your LA Times piece is so tangible and relatable thanks to your incredible knack for detail. How do you pick and choose which details to use and which to cut? Where do you find the balance between the universal and the specific?

I learned as an editor the more specific you can be in a piece the better. What details to pick and choose depends on the publication. When I’m writing for the LA Times or the Weekly, my details will focus on specifics to the city, for example I’ll include street names or well-known restaurants. Whereas when I’m writing for an audience that is national, like Salon, my details can be more universal but I always keep them as specific.

8. Pitching stories is one of the most crucial and nuanced steps of getting published. What’s your biggest piece of advice for aspiring writers trying to get an editor’s attention?

My biggest piece of advice for writers trying to get an editor’s attention is to be extremely familiar with the outlet they are pitching to. Find out what kind of stories the editor is looking for (it’s OK to ask), read the publication from top-to-bottom, and tailor your pitches just for that publication and that specific editor.

9. What do you think is the difference between a good and a great essay?

A good essay weaves a compelling story but a great essay has a narrative that makes you feel something: knees shaking, heart aching, head spinning.

10. We know that you’ll cover this more fully in your class, but can you let us in on one secret in crafting hooks for your pitch?

Journalism is different than other forms of publishing because it speaks to this very moment in time. Have a timely hook in your pitch or essay that relates to the news cycle, trends, or season. That time hook gives you an advantage when you’re pitching. One thing to remember is it doesn’t have to be a complicated news angle. For example, for my recent New York Times piece about an app for mobile-first moms to connect (and the dark side of technology for parents) the time hook was Mother’s Day.

11. What can students expect to learn from your class?

In my class, I’ll be passing on more than 10 years of knowledge and the tools and strategies that helped me land stories and essays in the New York Times, Elle, Salon, the Los Angeles Times, and other publications. I’ll offer writing prompts to kick-start ideas, a guide for how to crack the personal essay market, and tips for knocking down creative blocks. I’ll share how to include all the essential elements that editors look for in a personal essay: the hook, tone and angle—and some bad date stories, because who doesn’t love a good bad date story?

Thanks so much, Sophia!

Check out some of Sophia’s amazing pieces:

NY Times: An App for Mothers Who Missed Out on Tinder

LA Times: LA Affairs: Fiction With A Friend, Not Boyfriend

Elle: Men Have Vocal Fry and Uptalk Too, But People Don’t Penalize Them in the Same Way

An Interview with Eliza Smith

By Laura Van Slyke

 

Ever thought, “I wanna hear myself on the radio”? Eliza Smith did and now that’s where you can find her! A producer of both non-fiction and fictional pieces for Snap Judgment, Eliza is living her radio dreams. Whether it’s writing, editing, producing, researching, or even acting in the stories, she leaves no stone unturned.

 

Eliza will be teaching a class on Podcasting (5 Wk) at Writing Pad San Francisco starting Sunday, 11/5, where you’ll learn everything you need to build your own podcast.
 

1. What first attracted you to making stories for radio?

 

I’ve loved public radio since I was a kid. I grew up in Santa Monica, and my home station was KCRW. I remember hearing Terry Gross and Ira Glass and thinking, “I want to hear myself on the radio someday.” (I realize that that isn’t an original feeling!).

 

For a long time, I thought I’d become a fiction writer. I wrote stories from the time I learned to write, through college. But after school, I started a podcast with my friend; it featured flash fiction & small press authors. I realized that I loved editing so much more than I enjoyed writing. Where writing felt like pulling teeth, I loved finding ways for people tell their stories better.

 

I had worked in the social sector as a grant writer since I graduated school. When I met my now-husband, I told him that I wanted to be a radio producer full-time. He’s an audio engineer & a record producer full time, and helped me navigate the ins-and-outs of interning and juggling side gigs. At his urging, I quit my full-time job, and took an internship at the Kitchen Sisters. I ended up meeting Julia DeWitt, a former Snap Judgment producer, through friends. She helped me understand the radio world better, and introduced me to Mark and Glynn at Snap Judgment. The rest, as they say, is history. I’ve been at Snap for 3 years now, and I love every minute of my work.

 

2. You also write your own fiction which has been published on places like Spork, Pank, and the Litography Project. What is your favorite thing about storytelling?

 

I think my favorite thing about story telling is that I can become an expert on subjects I’m really interested in. Whether I’m writing fiction or producing a nonfiction segment on Snap, I need to research what I’m writing about. When I write fiction, I tend to write “fabulist” stories (I love people like Etgar Keret, Angela Carter, Alissa Nutting, Manuel Gonzales, Italo Calvino, etc.).

 

Fiction allows me to do more existential research. I can explore subjects and themes that may or may not be “real” in the traditional sense–like ghosts, inanimate objects-turned-animate, animal/people hybrids–and become a sort of “expert” in them.

 

I’ll read folklore that features the themes I’m exploring, reference writers who’ve explored this territory before me, even read scholarship that analyzes to these themes.

 

When I make nonfiction, I do the same thing, but my research is grounded in more concrete phenomena. For example, for the past year or so, I’ve been researching what happens to homeless people when they die. I’ve been researching Hart’s Island in the Hudson River. I’ve learned a ton about schizophrenia from a story I did about Charles Monroe Kane. I’ve gotten to learn a lot about what it’s like to be a teenager right now–I’ve been following a senior at Mission High for the last 9 months. My job allows me to be a student all the time. And this is great, because I LOVE school and thought I’d miss it. Turns out, I don’t have to miss it at all!

 

3. What’s one thing you can do in radio that you can’t do in any other genre?

 

I think you can be intimate in radio in a way that you can’t in other genres. You’re literally in someone’s head when you’re telling a story–and this allows you to deal with concepts are really personal. I mentioned this story above–I interviewed Charles Monroe Kane from To the Best of Our Knowledge about his experiences as a child preacher who had undiagnosed schizophrenia. I felt like I could really go deep and explore mental illness with him because we are on the radio. He has roughly 16 minutes to talk about what it feels like to hear voices in his head… and I love that listeners are experiencing him as a voice in their heads. I think there is such a closeness in that act of listening that can’t be duplicated in other media. And I love creating that experience for listeners, of losing one’s self in someone else’s personal space.

 

4. What do you look for in a story when you want it to go from the page to the recording booth?

 

For fiction, we look for pretty much the exact same thing we look for in nonfictional Snap stories: a beginning, middle, and end with a good twist, strong characters, and a little bit of je ne sais quoi-freshness. We talk about our stories a lot as “movies for your ears”, and when I’m on the hunt for fiction, I’m looking for stories that have a filmic quality. I’m looking for evocative imagery, powerful scenes and characters with agency facing/resolving conflict.

 

The really fun part of doing fiction is that I get to adapt the work of writers I admire. It’s such an honor to work with authors whose work I’ve been so excited to discover. And I get to jump into that editorial role–I have raw material to work with, and I get to retell it. We’ve only done one of my original stories, and I had written the flash fiction version of it a few years ago, so I got to be an editor/adaptor there, too.

 

It’s also really fun doing voice acting, casting, directing, and collaborating with our sound team on foley, score, and audio context. When a fiction production comes together, it feels really magical.

 

5. Let us in on one thing that Snap Judgment looks for in a story to air on the show?

 

I think my favorite part of our stories is that we demand the narrator/main character display a great amount of agency. They make decisions that affect the world around them–that have ripple effects. Personally, I value my own agency a great deal, and try to exercise it when I know I need to, even if it’s scary. And I love talking to people who have had to flex that muscle in difficult decisions.

 

Recently, I did a story about a woman who is was an Apartheid-government spy in South Africa. Her decision to defect and join the opposition was enormous, with great consequences, but she did it anyway because she felt she couldn’t live with herself otherwise. We did all our interviews at 3am, Pacific Time, because she lives in Italy now, and I just remember feeling so excited listening to her. I was (probably not) the only person awake in my neighborhood, listening to a woman talk about how she risked her life to help bring an end to an evil regime. *chills!*

 

6. Would you walk us through the process of a radio piece from story scouting to final touches?

 

I should say that every story is different–some stories basically produce themselves, and take about a month to make (this is the standard, everything-goes-to-plan, meet-all-your-deadlines production span for us at Snap). And some, I’ve worked on for quite literally years. So, I would say that time is a major variable.

 

But story scouting, or searching for pitches, is something I do on a daily basis. I think I spend, easily, about 3-5 hours a week looking for stories. This is really hard and really fun, simultaneously. I won’t reveal my sources, because I’ve found some weird places to explore that really work for me, and I’ve spent a long time locating those places. But I usually find a thread, an idea, and tease it out through research.

 

I’ll look for concepts, then people whose stories are examples of those concepts, if that makes sense. So for example, I wanted to do a story about impossible instances of survival. So I worked with my colleague, Anna Sussman, to adapt an Esquire piece about a group of people surviving a deadly tornado by jumping in a cooler at the back of a gas station.

 

What made that piece magical? SOMEONE RECORDED THE WHOLE TORNADO WITH THEIR iPHONE FROM THE INSIDE OF THE COOLER. That’s holy grail tape, right there.

 

Interviews are about 2 hours long. Generally, we do 2-3 interviews, so we work with 4-6 hours of tape per story. It’s a lot of work cutting it down. But often during an interview, you know what parts of the tape are going to be very useful to your story. It’s easy to locate them if you get the sound files right away–if you get it a little later, a transcript helps with that. Editing can take a while, depending, as aforementioned, on how much time the story needs to be a story.

 

We have the luxury of having a phenomenal in-house sound team. Pat Mesiti-Miller, Leon Morimoto, and Renzo Gorrio write the original score & sound design all of our stories. So our stories really get the luxury treatment from these insanely talented people.

 

Also, it’s important to mention that sometimes, you do a ton of work, and your story gets killed. Lots and lots of Snap stories never see the light of day. And I hate getting stories killed, but I’m so grateful for my colleagues for killing my stories that aren’t good enough. Failing = growth, in my opinion.

 

7. What are your favorite podcasts right now (other than Snap)?

 

I’m really into the entire Crooked Media universe–I love Pod Save America, Lovett or Leave it, and now, Pod Save the People. I also really appreciate the levity of all the folks who make the NPR Politics podcast.

 

I listen to a ton of audiobooks on Audible. Right now, I’m listening to It by Stephen King, and I’m loving it.

 

8. What separates a good story for the radio from a great story?

 

A good radio story is one that is full of darlings that should have been killed. A great radio story is one in which every single word matters.

 

9. Do you think the rising craze over podcasts can help us build deeper empathy through storytelling?

 

I do, but I think we have to reach out to people who do not already participate in what we are doing as an industry. As a white woman in podcasting–and there are a lot of white women in podcasting–my aim is to use my job to be the person who hands to mic to people who we don’t hear from. I try to ask myself as often as possible: how can I amplify voices that I know we don’t hear from enough? Who do we need to hear from? And, how can I help listeners confront and digest ideas which are uncomfortable?

 

As a producer, my job is basically creating a really nice package for other people’s stories. Recently, I produced a story about Genetic Sexual Attraction, a concept that a lot of people are really uncomfortable with. My aim with the story was to give this couple the mic, to talk about their experience. Which, by the way, is really tender and wonderful and genuine. I hope that came across in the story that aired.

 

I am also really proud that, in a field plagued by a lack of diversity, I get to work for a show that talks the talk and walks the walk. We have a very diverse staff, and it’s such a service to our show: we have different backgrounds, different levels of experience, different areas of interest. I learn from my co-workers all the time. I think this is also reflected in our interviewees: we make a point to talk to lots of really different people. And yes, there definitely are times when we need to course-correct and make sure we interview less men, or more people of color, or more people from outside the US, but we are able to be honest and identify these disparities in our coverage and address them pretty nimbly.

 

10. Let us in on one thing that students will learn in your “Radio Storytelling” class?

 

That failure is integral to growth when it comes to writing (or anything). I hope everyone can learn to celebrate the fact that sometimes, you need to write a thousand shitty stories before you write one you love. It’s important to acknowledge that sometimes, things don’t work.

 

And it’s better to move on and devote your creative energy to projects that have legs, as opposed to trying to beat the proverbial dead horse. Most of the time, you write things that are terrible. Sometimes, you knock it out of the park. The proportions are unfair, but hey, so is life. Plus, it feels so much better to put out one story you’re obsessed with, as opposed to 10 stories that’ll embarrass you a year later.

 

Wow! Thanks for paying it forward and sharing so much with us, Eliza. Remember to check out Eliza’s Podcasting class starting Sun. 11/5 in San Francisco.

By Nicole Erb

Breaking into the writers’ room can feel impossible. But persistence, flexibility, and talent pay off. Enter: Michael. Starting with a Daytime Emmy nomination (GENERAL HOSPITAL), Michael has written for sitcom (AWKWARD), family drama (BROTHERS AND SISTERS), and dramedy (JANE THE VIRGIN). Now he’s working on interactive mobile storytelling. In this interview with TV Writer Michael Cinquemani, he discusses his incredibly versatile path.

Michael will be teaching a live online TV Pilot Writing Class at Writing Pad starting Tuesday, 2/6 where you’ll learn everything you need to know about TV fundamentals and crafting a great TV series.

1. How did you land your first TV gig?

Let’s see… my father’s-boss’-friend’s-cousin’s-former roommate had a production job on a soap opera and got me an interview as an intern on a show in New York. I didn’t go to a school with a screenwriting program like USC or UCLA so I just dug deep (obviously– that’s like almost six degrees of separation) and asked everyone I knew if they knew anyone who could help me break in. I got that internship and within weeks I was the writers’ assistant at the soap and soaking up everything I could learn about the process of writing for TV. From there I just kept generating new specs and taking any gig that kept me in and around the writing room.

Eventually I started writing scripts for soaps while doing a full time job as a script continuity editor, then I got my first full time writing contract. After a few years I wanted to try my hand at primetime, but no one would even consider me. It was frustrating, because here I’d written hours and hours of TV and been in writing rooms but I couldn’t get in the door. So I kept writing new traditional show specs and pilots and after a few tries landed the Disney Fellowship which opened doors to so many other shows. And I pretty much kept staffing after that.

2. You began your career working for successful soaps like General Hospital and All My Children and then made the transition to working for amazing shows like The Vampire Diaries, Revenge, Awkward, and Jane the Virgin. Any difference between a writers’ room for soaps and primetime?

Every show I’ve been on has a different system but the net result is the same. You’re trying to put out great TV. Soaps are much more of a factory. You have to produce so much long story, outlines, scripts and episodes per week to keep the show on the air. The jobs are a little more discreet and sometimes the writers aren’t even in the same state! The head writers are mostly responsible for the thrust of the long arc, the outline writers help shape individual days and then someone else writes the actual script. In both cases, you learn not to be precious.

3. What separates a good script from a great script?

Voice. Point of view. Heart. Dialogue. I’m obsessed with all of these. People talk a lot about the rules of the craft. I think you can break any of those rules if you have a strong voice. A strong point of view. If you pour your heart into it and even if you can just write aspirational dialogue that makes people wish they could talk like that in real life. That’s the Sorkin thing. Or the “Gilmore Girls” thing. The Buffy thing.

But at the end of the day the story needs to move people. It needs to be focused. That’s a lot of things that separate a good script from a great script, huh? The truth might be that when a script is great all of the above just comes together seamlessly and we’re entertained.

4. You’ve sold two pilots to MTV. You’ve sold them two. What’s the key to a successful pitch?

Know your story inside and out. Love, live, and die by it. There are a bunch of tricks you can employ to land a pitch. But nothing beats preparation. You can be insanely charismatic but if there are holes and they get called out you’re not gonna make a sale. They might like the idea but they’re not going to be convinced you can execute it. So practice, be passionate, and the audience will be compelled!

5. What’s the #1 rookie writer mistake?

Not hooking the reader in the first few pages. I want to give someone a script that they can’t put down. And honestly, people in the business are reading SO much, it’s hard to keep their attention. So do whatever you can to make the first five pages, ten, fifteen completely original and engaging. Make the reader HAVE TO keep turning them to the end. Engage, engage, engage. You can do that but surprising the reader, with an unexpected scenario out of the gate, with a really original character or a brutally honest voice. Don’t give them one single line that allows them to bail.

6. You’ve worked on some of the greatest comedies and dramas. How do you stay versatile?

That was totally by design. When I first started in TV I heard, “you can’t write primetime, you write soap.” Or “you can’t do half hour if you’re in hour.”

“You want to work in comedy now– you’re a drama writer!” It pissed me off. I loved teen dramedy. I loved classy family drama. Basically I was all about character. If I wanted to spend time with a character week-to-week I didn’t care what format their show was in– I wanted to watch. I felt the same way about my writing.

So if I was on a teen half hour– when it came time to look for new work– I asked my agents to submit me for hour. I figured being versatile in an ever growing and changing marketplace would be make me more employable. And also, I watched these kinds of shows and considered myself a good mimic. So I got to have fun, face new challenges and work on a lot of shows I loved. It was win-win.

7. What’s your advice to aspiring TV writers for breaking into the biz & having a healthy career?

Try everything. The fellowships and writing workshops and classes and programs. Be knowledgeable about the business. Watch A LOT of TV. Read A LOT of books. Consume, consume, consume entertainment and know how to talk about it. Be educated and voracious about information. You never know who you’ll be talking to and how it could help. Never look down on a job. Whether it be a PA or working on an exec’s desk. If you want to be in the business, be around it, too. And of course write, write, write. It’s a struggle. But the worst thing is getting a break and then not being prepared for it. That means you’ve squandered a possibly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and that’s a tragedy.

8. You are currently working as a showrunner at the interactive mobile storytelling platform, EPISODE. How is the process of writing stories for mobile different than TV?

Turns out it’s not. EPISODE is a cool place that is fostering an online community of writers to tell stories visually. For any of the branded product (like MEAN GIRLS or PRETTY LITTLE LIARS) or Episode Originals (like JUVIE or THE ROYAL BABY) I run the room the same way it’s done in TV. We take an idea, we flesh it out, we come up with a long story, arc that over the designated number of chapters we’ll have in a season and make sure that the cliffhanger on the story makes the reader feel like they MUST continue reading or die. We laugh, we tell personal stories, we argue about plot points and character motivation. We work together collaboratively to make the story entertaining.

The biggest variation in mobile at this point is that the reader gets to make choices along the way in the story that will take them in different directions– something we’re not seeing on TV yet. And that leads to variation in the narrative and the character’s journey. Sure you can’t do everything that they can on a big budget TV show yet but this is a different medium and it’s growing and evolving and in the future we’ll definitely get there. At the end of the day story is story and writing is about communicating that story in the best, most clear and entertaining way possible. You can’t do that without writers!

9. How do you keep shows gripping for multiple episodes and seasons?

I’ve always felt that in serialized fiction that the character is key to keeping people coming back. A great plot isn’t going to resonate if you don’t care about the characters. Soaps and comic books have proved that for decades. Movies are doing that now with all the legacy franchises like STAR WARS. People want to keep going back to those narratives because of great characters. TV is the same– in fact it’s the BEST medium for constantly getting to feed the audience character story.

A character doesn’t have to be shocking to be compelling either. That’s an idea that seems to have been popular in the last ten years. You don’t have to be an anti-hero to be a compelling character. I think you just have to be true. Honest characterization is the best. If we trust that the character is being true to themselves and their struggle I think we come back season after season. We want to believe people can change and evolve. TV let’s us follow that journey. If it works, we’re hooked.

10. Where do find stories? Can you give me an example of something that happened to you that you adapted to storylines that were used on a show that you worked on?

There’s a popular adage: write what you know. And boy have I found that’s true. That doesn’t mean if you’re a kid from Long Island who moved to Hollywood to be a writer EVERY story you write is about that. It’s all about how you take the experiences of your life, your unique point-of-view and apply it to any given scenario that you’re writing.

I used to say that people always mocked soaps because of the “back from the dead” storylines. But then I’d ask them to imagine that they had a relationship that ended tragically and had to deal with that grief and eventually move on with their lives.

And then one day, that person, who maybe moved away or cut you out of their life abruptly showed up again wanting to get back in. How would you react? How would that feel? It’s probably happened to everyone at some point in their lives. Well that’s how you approach a back from the dead scenario in your writing. It’s more extreme but the emotional core is there.

Specifically I can say that I had a personal story in my youth– about how I had a crush on a girl and tried to woo her in the fourth grade by giving her a really special birthday present– and how CRUSHED I was when she liked another boy’s gift more– that I used in my storytelling that got me several jobs. What made the story kind of unique was that I turned out to be gay– but at the time– I had no idea. I just wanted this girl to like me! And I think the adults around me were thinking– this is kind of weird. I used that story as a C story in a spec for “Ugly Betty.” Her nephew Justin was gay but didn’t know it. People just really reacted to how personal and unusual the story was. I think they thought it was funny and sweet and human. It got me my first two jobs in primetime.

11. Give us a preview of what writers will learn from your classes?

They’ll learn everything I know from twenty years in the business. I tend to over share. And I’ll do that here, too. I think they can expect honesty, passion, practical advice and more than a few colorful anecdotes to help them either not make the mistakes I did or hopefully inspire a direction in their own work. I’ll talk about (in no specific order here) everything from pace, rhythm, voice and point of view to long story, triangles and cliffhangers. Nothing they want to know is off limits.

Thank you, Michael! We’re all one step closer to writing our buzz-inducing pilot.

Check out Michael’s Online TV Pilot class!