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The Pitch

#19 - Leah and Angel Interview Geoffrey Calhoun - Pt 2

39 min episode · 2 min read
·
Jeffrey Calhoun

Episode

39 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Career Growth, Productivity, Relationships

AI-Generated Summary

Key Takeaways

  • Receiving Notes: Approach criticism with humility and recognize that qualified readers care about your story. Target specific feedback requests rather than general notes, and identify when notes come from unqualified sources who lack screenwriting experience despite confidence from the Dunning-Kruger effect.
  • TV Pilot Development: Write features before attempting TV pilots, which represent advanced screenwriting. Develop the world first through extensive research, plant seeds for future seasons, and work backwards from the character's end state rather than starting with episode one to build proper character arcs.
  • Visual Timeline Method: Use six-foot dry erase boards to map character timelines horizontally, then superimpose multiple character arcs together. This visual approach mirrors how audiences consume stories over time and provides necessary perspective for breaking complex narratives with multiple storylines or time periods.
  • Career Readiness: Wait five years of consistent writing practice before actively seeking representation or pitching scripts. Focus on providing value to industry contacts through collaboration rather than transactional networking. Create opportunities through film festival attendance, teaching, and building public presence beyond just writing.

What It Covers

Screenwriter Jeffrey Calhoun discusses the craft of screenwriting, from handling criticism and building industry relationships to developing TV pilots and creating visual timelines. He shares his martial arts background and approach to script consultation.

Key Questions Answered

  • Receiving Notes: Approach criticism with humility and recognize that qualified readers care about your story. Target specific feedback requests rather than general notes, and identify when notes come from unqualified sources who lack screenwriting experience despite confidence from the Dunning-Kruger effect.
  • TV Pilot Development: Write features before attempting TV pilots, which represent advanced screenwriting. Develop the world first through extensive research, plant seeds for future seasons, and work backwards from the character's end state rather than starting with episode one to build proper character arcs.
  • Visual Timeline Method: Use six-foot dry erase boards to map character timelines horizontally, then superimpose multiple character arcs together. This visual approach mirrors how audiences consume stories over time and provides necessary perspective for breaking complex narratives with multiple storylines or time periods.
  • Career Readiness: Wait five years of consistent writing practice before actively seeking representation or pitching scripts. Focus on providing value to industry contacts through collaboration rather than transactional networking. Create opportunities through film festival attendance, teaching, and building public presence beyond just writing.

Notable Moment

Calhoun optioned a struggling writer's script for one dollar on a napkin at a cafe, transforming their confidence by allowing them to legitimately call themselves an optioned screenwriter. This simple gesture helped the writer move past psychological barriers blocking their progress.

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Episode Transcript

The Michigan Achievement Scholarship is funding every grad, every path, and odds are your high school senior or recent grad will qualify for free money for community college, public or private university, or career training, no matter their GPA. And the scholarship is less income based than you might expect. Wherever your child is headed, there's free money to get them where they wanna go. Learn more at mi.gov/achievement. The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online, and more personal info in more places that could expose you more to identity theft. But LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second. If your identity is stolen, our US based restoration specialists will fix it guaranteed or your money back. Don't face drained accounts, fraudulent loans, or financial losses alone. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with LifeLock. Save up to 40 your first year. Visit lifelock.com/podcast. Terms apply. Welcome to Pitch. For this week's episode, we're finishing up our chat with Jeffrey d Calhoun, screenwriter, author of the book, The Guide for Every Screenwriter, and creator and host of The Successful Screenwriter Podcast. We pick up where we left off last episode with Leah asking Jeffrey for three proactive things that newer writers should be doing. Let's find out what he has to say. Proactively Besides writing, of course. Right. The hardest part is getting your butt in the seat, though. Proactively, you need I mean, really look at it as a craft and more than an art. See, one thing that I I used to run into, and I don't run into it so much more now, but I think it's probably because of my reputation. But I would get scripts that were coming that were clearly unpolished and needed a lot of work. And I would approach the the writer like, hey. We have some work to do here and and, and, would get hit with a lot of negative feedback feedback. I would get hit from, like, a lot of negative comments from that writer. And I've heard crazy things like, you don't understand my genius, and and stuff like that. And I'd say, one, let's not let's not make that be the first thing you tell somebody to teach you screenwriting. But, but you would hear things like that or I'm an artist. And and so when I when I hear those things or when a producer hears it or any other writer hears it, all they're hearing is your insecurity. That's all they're hearing. That has nothing to do with betterment of the craft or making the project better. Yeah. So I I think a low a level of humility is really something you need, and being willing to learn and to get better, will bring more relationships into your life around screenwriting to help you blossom and bloom. Because, you know, like you guys know, if you get a script that comes in and is really good, now you're like, …

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