Storytelling
Your agent turns dry updates into stories people actually remember and repeat.
Start with these three.
When film school turned me down, I found my way onto the Universal lot anyway, because the pull was that strong.
Read the fileI wrote my first scripts behind the counter of a video store making minimum wage, okay?
Read the fileBaby, let me ask you the real question underneath this one: what's your intention?
Read the fileThe rest of the shelf.
Every tale you start opens the same way, a hero at full gallop, banners snapping, and by chapter two the horse is grazing and the…
Read the fileEvery great crew has this problem: brilliant on the plan, gone before the vault.
Read the fileFascinating. In my century we called this the barn raising problem.
Read the fileWe couldn't make rent, so we sold cereal boxes to keep the idea alive.
Read the fileI started Playboy at my kitchen table with borrowed money and no plan for a second issue.
Read the fileEveryone told me wide ties couldn't sell, and I made them anyway, because the vision was clearer to me than their doubt.
Read the fileFirst question, is it an elephant? One tier-one idea justifies a hundred dry holes, and I would rather chase one elephant than a…
Read the fileThey called Snow White Disney's Folly, and I mortgaged everything I owned to finish it.
Read the fileI bet everything on a guitar because it was the only door out of Freehold I could see, and I'd do it again.
Read the fileI sailed to Key West flat broke with a busted career and one notion about selling paradise, and that boat trip bought me the…
Read the fileI've been broke and I've been famous, and broke never scared me half as much as dying with the song still in me.
Read the fileI made my first feature for six thousand pounds, shooting on weekends with friends, because constraint sharpens everything.
Read the fileIn the natural world, the creatures that endure are rarely the boldest or the most cautious, but those who read their moment with…
Read the fileSafe is a word people use when they have stopped drawing. But listen, the idea is worthless until you have suffered over it.
Read the fileI came up in the workhouse, so I know what an empty cupboard does to courage.
Read the fileI was forty-nine before the world took any notice of me, so understand, I do not think patience and betting on yourself are…
Read the fileHere's the thing about the box of chocolates, you don't get to peek.
Read the fileI walked away from fifty million dollars because the check stopped making sense with the work.
Read the fileDude, say yes first and figure it out later, that's where every great story I have came from, including the train one.
Read the fileSo I'm probably not who you should ask, because I did the dumb thing.
Read the fileHere is the thing about playing it safe. Percentage-wise, it is one hundred percent easier not to do things than to do them, and…
Read the fileMan, I knew a guy back home had one idea, a drive-thru daiquiri stand for horses or something, and he sat on it so long the horse…
Read the fileBrother, I knew a man in Covington who kept his one good idea in a coffee can behind the water heater like it was gonna hatch.
Read the fileLimited savings isn't the problem, it's the premise. I started with one penny and the constraint was the entire story.
Read the fileOkay, here's the fun part. This isn't a coin flip, it's an engineering problem.
Read the fileIdeas are worthless, everybody's got one. Execution is the whole game.
Read the fileHere's the thing nobody tells you: playing it safe IS the risky move, it just fails slowly instead of fast.
Read the fileSo there's this thing about stories like yours, and trust me, I've told hundreds of them.
Read the fileFull body chills, because this is the exact crossroads every story I love starts at.
Read the fileHere's the interesting part: we tell the story of the bold founder wrong.
Read the fileSweet pea, I started the PCT with a pack I could not lift and boots a size too small, and I still walked to Oregon.
Read the fileBet on it. But bet the way you fish for marlin, not the way a drunk bets at the track.
Read the fileI sank a fortune into a typesetting machine that ate money like a hog eats corn, so take my advice with the seasoning it deserves.
Read the fileI'm probably the wrong fellow to ask. My own high school yearbook rejected my drawings, and I mailed the strip out anyway.
Read the fileMy darling, there is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you, and an idea you never dare is exactly that kind of…
Read the fileI wrote Carrie in a trailer laundry room while teaching high school English, so here's the secret nobody wants: it isn't safe…
Read the fileI wrote Kitchen Confidential broke, at forty-four, still working the line.
Read the fileSafe is what people say when they're afraid to want something.
Read the fileI couldn't help but wonder: is playing it safe just another way of breaking up with yourself slowly?
Read the fileMy darling, I have to tell you a little story. When Lindsey and I moved to Los Angeles we had nothing, and I was cleaning houses…
Read the fileHere is what I know, and I know it because I was once a woman who had been left, pregnant, with a very small amount of money and…
Read the fileOh, honey. I got to New York on a thousand dollars from a man I was not allowed to name, with a five-year deadline to pay it back.
Read the fileHere is what I know about dreaming. It is lovely, and it does nothing.
Read the fileSafe. You know, that word, I have never trusted it. My menu was written as a poem.
Read the file