The way you get your script to the right people is that you put it in an envelope. It's easy. The difficult bit is writing something that is so good people will take a punt on a brand new writer.
People don't really have a relationship with great writing or great production or great art direction or great direction. They just sort of admire it.
When writing comedy, you have to have the confidence to believe that there is only one type of relationship in the world, and we are all having it, that all men behave in the same way and so do all women.
Writing for adults often means just increasing the swearing - but find an alternative to swearing and you've probably got a better line.
I think training in comedy, as it were, a history writing comedy, is a powerful tool for anyone.
Like most writers, I write about what has happened to me as that involves the minimum amount of research.
I know this is going to sound very self-serving, and I apologize for it, but if you can write comedy, you can pretty much write anything, because it's the hardest. It's the most technically demanding, the most precisely evaluated form of writing. People know if it works or not. There's a big button marked 'fail,' and that's when nobody laughs.
Witty and mean is easy - but fond and funny is hard.
A commission and an original are two different things, and both have their virtues and vices. A commission is a bit more collaborative, in that you outline the story that you think should be told, and then you write it.
It's such a gift when you know who you're writing for and you know that that actor is capable of so much that you can relax a bit.
I've been writing so much. And what happens with TV is that they split [Taboo] into two blocks, so you get a director that does four and another director that does another four. You commit yourself to seven days a week, for 12 or 13 hour days for a long time. I couldn't really do that.
The time came where I was able to write an original screenplay [Allied], and it would be read and noticed. I had a meeting with Brad [Pitt], just around the time that he was making World War Z. I basically told him the story and said, "This is what I want to do," and he really responded, so that helped me put the thing together and write it.
With any period piece I think the thing to do is forget that it's not contemporary when you're writing and to have the characters feel as much as possible like characters that you would know.
There's lots of different ways of writing stuff and lots of different mindsets to have, but I think when it's your own creation, it's more pleasurable because you have total control.
There’s no way to really preserve a person when they’ve gone and that’s because whatever you write down it’s not the truth, it’s just a story. Stories are all we’re ever left with in our head or on paper: clever narratives put together from selected facts, legends, well edited tall tales with us in the starring roles
Believe it or not, friendships are difficult to write in fiction. They can easily come across as forced, particularly if they involve too much explication and too many overt gestures of affection.
I have to feel what I'm writing, right down to the core.
I am black, so with my writing and my voice, you get that kind of dialect.
I honestly think if I had made a ton of money as an actor, I wouldn't have done anything else. (Hah!) Then I turned to writing plays. If that paid me well, I don't know if I would have turned to TV. Or coaching. I've now devised a combination of things partly because I'm having fun, and partly because I'm piecing together a way to make a living.
I often say of my background: "That and a Metrocard will get me downtown." Honestly, I think the upshot of my training in acting and writing is that I've been trained to be adventurous. There are so many moments in conservatory where I was encouraged to push the envelope and color outside the lines. I think that sense of bravery flavors what I do. It allows me to take chances that I might not otherwise take.
Writing for television is a great job. And it's a job. Most people watch TV and have a comment about one or two moments of an episode - whether they love it or hate it or something in between. To come up with every moment of an entire season of a TV shows is heavy lifting.
One of the problems of writing is that anyone who commits themselves to that process has to believe that they're good.
I am devoting some time to music. I'm finding a balance in my life right now so that when I'm not acting I'm really working on the music side of things... producing and writing and recording and also getting to do some live shows. It's a really exciting thing.
I've always thought flight was fun and wanted to write about flight, and I knew a lot of househusbands who were having a really bad time with it. I thought flight might perk up a marriage here or there.
Until I became a nurse, no one had ever asked me to sign a book contract. I had been writing for decades, read thousands of books, and even worked in publishing for 10 years. Who knew that nursing would be my break?
