Words of Wisdom from Franklin Leonard

It’s been a delight getting to know and work with Franklin over the years, especially since we share the same professional North Star: Spotlighting great screenwriters, noteworthy scripts, and the craft of storytelling.

For the last 4 years, Franklin has graciously agreed to do a Skype Q&A with the university class I teach each fall. Wednesday was this year’s session. Needless to say, Franklin dropped truth bombs and wisdom galore during the hour-long call. Here are some highlights:

• Watch movies. Read scripts. Write pages. Franklin literally quoted my mantra to the class, exhorting these young writers to immerse themselves in the craft.
• Enrich your soul. The experiences one has living life can feed a writer’s creativity, therefore seek out new opportunities, study art, music, architecture, find inspiration wherever you can.
• Treat people with respect. Don’t be a Hollywood asshole, rather by treating people well, that can help you professionally and enable you to be satisfied when you look at yourself in the mirror.

One takeaway from Franklin my students gravitated toward was this: Aim ridiculously high when choosing what stories you write. Does the world really need the 10,000th scripted variation of Taken? Instead whatever genre you write, zero in on a special story with special meaning to you, and write the hell out of it.

Franklin didn’t sugar coat his message. The film and TV business is incredibly competitive. It’s hard to get established and challenging to build and sustain a career. However the Hollywood development system which pretty much used to be a closed loop has changed. Any writer from anywhere in the world has access to literary representatives, producers, talent, and buyers through online outfits such as the Black List website.

You may not have had the opportunity my writing students did to spend an hour with Franklin Leonard, but you can enjoy an excellent video which just came out this week entitled “Franklin Leonard — It Starts With Story: Transforming Hollywood from the Ground Up”.

Hopefully my Writing for Screen and Stage students will be part of that transformation process by writing great original stories. Franklin’s words certainly inspired them — and me — to aim as high as we can with our creative ambitions.

Onward!

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