Write On: 'Nonnas' Screenwriter Liz Maccie and Director Stephen Chbosky
Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast
Release Date: 05/14/2025
Write On: 'Countdown' Creator/Writer Derek Haas
Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast
“One thing I’ve found in the crime genre is that homicides are always interesting. When somebody’s killed, whatever that case may be, it’s usually compelling drama. So then it’s up to you as the writer to surprise the audience and do things that they didn’t think were coming. I’ve described it like this before: If you can hit the sweet spot of, ‘I didn’t see that coming! I should have seen it coming, but I didn’t see it coming,’ That, to me, is the best writing. It’s like, when you got to the end of The Sixth Sense, and you were like, ‘Oh my god, I should have seen...
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Write On: 'Apple Cider Vinegar' Creator and Showrunner Samantha Strauss
Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast
“In my mind, Belle is going through life, at least our version of Belle – I've never met the real Belle – she’s going through life with this hole inside, this overwhelming need for approval, that social media absolutely capitalizes on and she just keeps trying to feed the beast. She hasn't grown up with the healthiest of role models herself. She has learnt that being sick is a shortcut to being loved and to getting attention,” says Samantha Strauss, creator and showrunner for the Netflix limited series Apple Cider Vinegar, about understanding her main character’s disgraceful...
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Write On: 'Matlock' Creator & Showrunner Jennie Snyder Urman
Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast
“The most important thing that I've learned as a storyteller is that I have to treat every character in the show as though they're the lead in the show, and they are never doing anything so that I can prompt a move from another character. They are doing things that are true to what they want and their motivation. So that's what makes that architecture hard, because you know you want things to happen, but they have to happen coming out of character, not coming out of what the room wants to see happen. So it's like the merging of those two. We know what architecture we want, but if it doesn't...
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Write On: 'Running Point' Showrunner David Stassen
Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast
“It’s not ripped from the headlines. We’re not using any of [the Buss family’s] real-life stories and putting them into our show. Because Mindy [Kaling], Ike [Barinholtz], and I have so many influences like Arrested Development, 30 Rock, The Office and Succession, we’re coming up with our own fun stories and fun situations to put this dysfunctional, very wealthy, successful family into a blender and then have them going back and forth and arguing and solving problems together and against each other,” says David Stassen, showrunner of Running Point, about taking inspiration from Los...
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Write On: 'Hurry Up Tomorrow' Director/Co-Writer Trey Edward Shults
Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast
“It was a lot of empathizing. I would do long phone calls with Abel (Tesfaye, aka the Weeknd) after we had met, just basically talking to him and finding out more of his history, where he was at in different phases of his life, where he’s at today, and using those to create a character. And part of creating that character is I’ll find my own personal stuff to attach to it… Portions of his life I can relate to very much. And past all of that, I think this is the deepest I’ve gone with my therapy background and my mom and stepdad being therapists. I tried to make the movie work to...
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Write On: 'Nonnas' Screenwriter Liz Maccie and Director Stephen Chbosky
Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast
“Sometimes it’s easier to find and access your truth through ‘pretend’ characters. So I had this embarrassment of riches of this true story but in my heart, I was like, ‘I totally get to tell my truth!’… So my advice is find a way to do it, and if you have to do a mind trick by saying, ‘I’m writing this pretend character’ that’s fine, but put all the stuff that’s real to you into that pretend character, because I find there is an immense amount of freedom in being able to write through these characters because they aren’t exactly my family, they are pieces of them....
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Write On: 'Shadow Force' Director/Co-Writer Joe Carnahan and Co-Writer Leon Chills
Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast
“For me, I don’t know how you could not make [a script] personal. I think drama allows you to hide how personal it is. I think that’s kind of what I like about writing in the genre space. On the outside looking in, it just looks like a big action movie. It doesn’t look like a personal story. But there are personal elements like my mom was a working mom as well. And so that’s why you have Kyra in the movie who has to come back to her son because she’s been working to protect him. That’s a very personal thing… but you would never assume that it’s a personal story because it’s...
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Write On: 2024 Big Break Short Film Winner Brandon Osterman and Seed&Spark
Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast
On today’s episode, we speak to writer Brandon Osterman, whose short script ‘The Naughty List’ won last year’s Final Draft Big Break Short Screenplay Category. As part of his prize package, he received a consultation with Sav Rodgers, Marketing Manager for Seed&Spark, the film industry’s most popular crowdfunding platform. Sav joins the conversation to tell us exactly what crowdfunding is and help all writers understand that funding for their project is possible to achieve. “Who is your audience? At Seed&Spark, we always say that great crowdfunding is audience...
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Write On: 'Good American Family' Co-Showrunners Katie Robbins and Sarah Sutherland
Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast
“One of the things we talked a lot about in the room is that very rarely do people set about their day saying, ‘Okay, I’m going to go do some evil.’ But for most people, we’re all sort of the leads in our own stories and we’re all crafting the narrative of who we want the world to see us as. And we do start to believe that. You tell yourself these stories about yourself that you want to be true and you move through the world and you make decisions based on that narrative. And I think that one of the things that as writers, we really try to do is get into the shoes and the heads of...
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Write On: 'NCIS Origins' Showrunners David J. North and Gina Lucita Monreal
Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast
“If you can make the twists [in the story] hit your character in an emotional way and set up their emotional arc, then when the case twist intersects with them, if it's hitting them in the deepest way, in the most unexpected way, maybe – then you've done your job. So it's getting that emotional arc to really bounce off of the crime story in the most impactful way,” says Gina Lucita Monreal about the most powerful way to fuse together story and character. On today’s episode, we talk with David J. North and Gina Lucita Monreal, showrunners and creators of the CBS show NCIS: Origins...
info_outline“Sometimes it’s easier to find and access your truth through ‘pretend’ characters. So I had this embarrassment of riches of this true story but in my heart, I was like, ‘I totally get to tell my truth!’… So my advice is find a way to do it, and if you have to do a mind trick by saying, ‘I’m writing this pretend character’ that’s fine, but put all the stuff that’s real to you into that pretend character, because I find there is an immense amount of freedom in being able to write through these characters because they aren’t exactly my family, they are pieces of them. Writing your truth is possibly the scariest thing, but your truth only belongs to you, you are the person who experienced it in the exact way you experienced it. Know that you are giving a great gift to the world by doing it,” says Liz Maccie, screenwriter for the new film Nonnas, about how to make someone else’s story personal to you.
On today’s episode we chat with Nonnas screenwriter Liz Maccie and director Stephen Chbosky about turning this true story into a heartfelt movie about a man who risks everything to honor his late mother by opening an Italian restaurant with actual grandmothers as the chefs.
Maccie and Chbosky, a real-life married couple, talk about their own families and how they were able to put pieces of themselves on the screen. They discuss the hilarious Nonnas’ food fight scene and how to balance grief with humor in the writing.
“I feel that the other side of grief is hope,” says Maccie, adding, “Because I have lost so much of my family, sometimes you’re drowning in the grief. Then you have that moment when you suddenly feel that spark of hope again… we are all going to lose someone, even losing a pet. When we love something, someone and it goes away it’s a devastating feeling and I think that connects us.”
Chbosky shared this advice for writers:
“The one bit of solace or encouragement that any writer of any age can find is that sometimes, the more specific you write about your experience the more universal the script and the movie is… I really am a humanist at heart. I believe in using this art form to find ways to unify people, inspire them and certainly give them hope, put on their shoes and go at it the next day, I just think that when you write about your own personal experience it can lead to great things. And it doesn’t mean that it has to be a dramedy or comedy, it could be horror, it could be sci-fi, it could be any genre that you feel as long as it is specific to you.”.
To hear more, listen to the podcast. Nonnas is currently streaming on Netflix.