206 | Everything You Need To Know About The Writer's Guild Foundation Library (AKA, a FREE Treasure Trove)
Today, we’re joined by Jaiver Barrios, Lauren, O’Connor, and Hilary Swett to discuss the INVALUABLE resources that the WGAF library provides for writers…FOR FREE.
RESOURCES DISCUSSED:
WGF Blog (Spec Primer Example!): https://www.wgfoundation.org/blog/2023/1/18/formatting-your-spec-script-a-primer-part-22?rq=abbot
WGF Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/WritersGuildFoundation
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Meg: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to The Screenwriting Life. I'm Meg LeFauve.
Jeff: And I'm not Lorien McKenna. She's actually on a very important deadline right now. Of course, you all know we're working writers and that happens. Producer Jeff is here stepping in and today we are thrilled to be chatting with three very important people from the Writers Guild Foundation Library.
We're joined by Lauren O'Connor, Javier Barrios, and Hilary Swett.
Meg: The WGAF Library provides tons of incredible resources for free. And there are a lot of folks that don't know about it. So today we're going to shine a light on the incredible service that the WGF provides.
Jeff: So real quick, as I mentioned, I would love if all three of you could introduce yourselves and please mention your role with the WGF library.
Javier: Sure I can go. My name is Javier Barrios and I'm one of the librarians here and in the library. My, my main job really is to be in the library from the time that it opens from 11 to 6, most weekdays. And then another duty of mine is to request scripts, because that's how we get scripts into the library from different shows, different films.
And then, help patrons all day long with any need, anything they need to read, any tips, tips, advice, things like that.
Lauren: And I'm Lauren O'Connor. I work with Javier. I basically do the same thing that he does. But I I'm a little more in terms of our like educational initiatives and being really active on our blog and that kind of thing.
So I I help patrons. Yes. And request scripts. Yes. But I also create a lot of like online resources and stuff for for patrons too. Awesome.
Jeff: And then Hilary,
Hilary: I'm Hilary sweat and I am the archivist at the foundation. And so, I work with with collections and scripts from, older people or people that have passed.
And I do a lot of research and just know a lot about things from a hundred years ago. Not I'm okay with today, but I know a lot more about a long time ago. And and so. I, so I deal a lot also like with historians and researchers, scholarly kind of people and help them with what they're working on and and we're a good team.
Lauren: And Hilary is one of the greatest researchers I've ever met. If you have a research question, Hilary can find an answer for you.
Meg: Oh, awesome. Awesome. I want to start just at the very basic. Baseline, which is for our audience and for me too. So, what is the WGAF Foundation and how is it different from the WGA?
Lauren: We are basically the screenwriting non profit on the first floor of the WGA West Building. We're associated with but ultimately independent of the Guild. And we're the Guild Services members. We are totally open to the public. So if you're just starting out in your writing career and you're looking for, hard to find scripts, we're you can come visit us if you're not local to LA and you have questions about hard to find scripts, you can email us.
And we just, we because we all know, the best way to become a better writer is to read and know what you're what you're going to do. Both. Read and write. Read and write. In tandem. In tandem. And arguably, probably writing is a little bit more important.
Meg: But no, I'm a big proponent of, you better have read on the page, lots and lots of scripts.
Lauren: Yes, and, and there's a lot, comparatively to, 20, 30 years ago, there's a proliferation of scripts on the internet but we have stuff that you truly cannot find anywhere else and in addition to scripts, we have show bibles, pitches other kinds of development materials, those kinds of things that can be, equally very helpful to people who are trying to figure it out.
Meg: And I also think you guys must have the real deal. A lot of things you find online are actually somebody watching the movie and typing it in, which I don't think is as helpful. You need to see how the author, the writer. Created it the movie on the page and how they use white space and description and all kinds of things to create the feeling of the end story of the movie So I think what's so amazing about you guys is you know, you're the real deal now, can you only read those scripts in your actual third Street location. How does it work in terms of internet II kind of services?
Javier: Yeah, it's a reference library, so that means that nothing that we have here, we don't have a system for checking out anyway. So everything gets read in house, and that's so that, to, to prevent, things getting distributed.
A lot of times the studios don't want us to distribute a lot of scripts. Especially if we get scripts from a new show, for example, The condition is, here they are I, correct me if I'm wrong Hilary and Lauren, but they're like a permanent loan to us and then, and with the, with the condition that we won't distribute them and pass them around.
A lot of times they get watermarked so that they know they belong to the library.
Meg: And how does that work? I know that I found out about you guys by an email that came in about asking for scripts. So I'm curious, because we have pro writers who listen to this who might be thinking, "Oh, I'd love my script to be part of that".
How does it work in terms of getting permission from the studios to do it? Can a writer just send their script in or do they need permission from the rights owner?
Lauren: Well, people do send us stuff without, formally asking for permission, just be just because the conditions are so, firmly, put out there where it's this doesn't leave the library.
It's for research purposes only. Sometimes they people do, get permission from from the studios and I would say universally everyone's pretty okay with scripts being in the library because they're so under lock and key. But occasionally we have to fill out, like a.... yeah... but but it's a mix some people, don't ask questions. Permission and then beg forgiveness later if it ever comes up, right?
Javier: And there are some companies that that we know already that they seem to tell all the writers like do not distribute these so there's some companies where we know we're going to ask for the scripts from them the writer is going to always tell us. "Oh, I don't know if I can do it". Let me ask for you know... that's that seems to be the problem.
Lauren: And then it's funny to sometimes like they do ask and then the company's like very happy to have the scripts in the library it's... I don't know.
Meg: And I would think most of them would be like you said there on such lock and key.
Lauren: Yeah
Meg: Jeff do you want to jump in?
Jeff: Yeah you know I'm interested just before we get into some more of the specific logistics, I am curious about the three of you I mean like it's a very interesting job that all three do you have. And just a little bit for our audience were you interested in screenwriting before you got involved with the WGF and what does your day to day feel like?
You're like reading all the time, which I mean, in some ways it's a dream.
Javier: We have this thing on Fridays where we call it, Lauren and I call it development Friday, where we, after three o'clock or so, if you want to read a script, we just sit and read a script while we help patrons.
I, for myself I am a writer. I just had a comic limited series of comic books published recently called Tuskers with my good friend Mark Gaffin. So, yeah, I'm very interested. I've always been interested in writing, but this has been like, To me, it's just like a dream job to have, that's all I talk about.
It's like screenwriting. So it's wonderful.
Lauren: Yeah, same with me. I I have always been interested in screenwriting. I studied screenwriting in undergrad at the time, we were doing like our spec scripts for my TV writing class. And at the time Glee was the really the hot show and that's what I and I hadn't been able to find anything related to that show the second we came into the library, I bolted to the shelf to see if they had it and sure enough, I spent, the hour that we were there just oh my God, I can't believe they have it.
Oh my God. And and now, I give tours to students and I see them bolt the same way to the shelf for like the second hour of the tour. They're just like, glued to them.
Meg: that's spectacular. Hilary, what about you?
Hilary: I did go to film school and, was trying to figure out where I fit in to the industry and wasn't, wasn't sure what I was doing as a lot of people are not sure.
And fell, I fell, unlike Lauren, I did fall into this because I didn't know what I was doing, but I decided to go to grad school and get my library science degree with the intention of hopefully getting some kind of, Film and TV adjacent job. And I didn't know exactly what that was going to look like.
I didn't know this place existed. And so here I am. And so I do research on a lot of individual writers and research on the history of the guild and all of its like many complicated facets. It's a nice team that we've gotten. We each have our strengths and our interests. So it's worked out really well.
Jeff: So, Lauren, I love that story you told, of course, is right when you got your job, anxiously looking for that Glee script because you were speccing it. And I'm sure a lot of our emerging writers can connect. Maybe they're speccing a show, or they're writing in a specific genre, and they're looking for some of the primo examples of that on the page.
Can you walk our listeners through the actual process of what it would look like for them to find maybe what they're looking for, or how they can rely on you all to maybe direct them toward material that would be helpful for them.
Lauren: Yes. So if you're local to Los Angeles you are more than welcome to come visit our library.
Our website is wgfoundation. org. All you need is to just make an appointment in advance. It's not hard. You can do it right on the website. And then we're open Tuesday through Friday. You come whatever day works best for you. And when you get here when you get to the library you'll see when you make your appointment, there's a place you can even request stuff in advance.
And if we have it, it will literally be sitting there waiting for you when you come to the library. But if you prefer to browse, you can do that too. For the people who and this is important too. We do have a catalog, which is and might be an archaic term to some people.
But if you're curious, does the WGF library have, this Glee script that I've been, looking for a really long time and can't find anywhere, you can search on our catalog and it will tell you if we have it or not. And And then for all the people listening who are not local to Los Angeles, you're probably thinking, oh man, like I would give anything to go to that library.
It sounds amazing. But I'm, I'm in Ohio or I'm, I'm really far away. We on our website and I it's really become robust. Since we, we had to close during the pandemic. So we were trying to think of all these ways that we can serve people even though we weren't like physically open.
So we have this really robust resource center. And how I spent pretty much the entirety of lockdown was creating this blog series on, specifically on writing spec scripts. Because I was in a deluge of emails. I need the formatting for, this and that show. And I was like, there's gotta be a better way than to just respond to this is what you do, this is how many acts, this is, I decided to put all of that into a blog. So, like over 125, current TV shows. So if you're that person who's like desperately working on the spec for a class, you can't find any examples of, Abbott Elementary or what, what have you go to that blog series and it explains how you format your spec script if you're specking it.
Meg: So in the blog series, like how would I let's say I needed to know how Abbott Elementary does what I look like. Go to your blog and write in Abbott Elementary and then are you showing me the actual script or are you just I'm showing summarizing it?
Lauren: Yeah , I we can't you know, as everything's under lock and key, but but what it will tell you is on average This is how many pages an Abbott script is, this is how many acts, this is roughly how long each act is this is how they format their act breaks, these are some of the key locations anything that you just want to if you're specing it that you just, would be helpful to know and and people often, and something that I learned During the pandemic, I became I never intended to, but I became an expert in television formatting, and it's really easy when you're watching a show to pick up on, there's a commercial there. So that's the end of that act.
And and if you have that primer just that tells you like how many acts, how many pages it becomes much easier to watch the show and understand the formatting, because people just get, we see it, they just get so desperate.
I can't write a spec if I can't see an example of the show. And it's I promise you you, you can like You just have to watch it. But that's, I would recommend even if you're not actively writing a spec script, that I think that blog series is like really helpful to just like internalizing, like television formatting.
Meg: And you said that you guys also, I love the blog. I'm gonna go check it out. I, you guys said that you also have pitch, you have pitch decks.
Lauren: We do all kinds of pitch materials. Yeah.
Meg: Pitch materials for TVs and features?
Lauren: Yes. Yes. We we have a lot of people, Billy Ray just gave us his, for both his pitch note cards for The Comey rule and for Richard Jewell, which are, have been like pouring over those.
They're very telling. And we have Shonda Rhimes, like her written pitch for Grace . Which is one of my favorite things in the library. But I'd love to read that. Yeah. It's great. It's great. It's one of the most, it's, one of the crown jewels.
Javier: Yeah, absolutely. We recommend that all the time and it gets looked at all the time.
Meg: Speaking of recommend, I actually, so Javi, if I come in and I'm a new writer, we get this question all the time on the Facebook group and I'm so glad it's there for it's like hive mind where people start, someone will say, I need to read a show that Is ensemble, but clearly it's a certain lead and it's in this kind of genre.
Like they just know the type of thing, but they don't actually have yet. Can you guys help them and think, well, I would read this, and this, can you do that kind of help too?
Javier: That's one of my, that's one of our favorite things I feel to do because a lot of times you will bring them things that they've almost even never heard of.
Meg: Right.
Javier: You know, because, so we have scripts in two places. We have them in the library and we have them in the lounge. The lounge scripts are like before the year 2000. And so we will know exactly what they're talking about and we'll pull out Barney Miller. Anybody? Or because they may not know that they're just doing a version of Barney Miller or, so, so, and that, and to me that's what makes it so valuable to come in here that you get, because you may, somebody in their twenties might, they might be limited in how far back they go as far as the shows.
Meg: Or even just shows that there's so much material on TV now.
There's so much material. Yeah. Yeah. So. And you could be like, if you watch this show, we've got this pilot and that would be so great.
Javier: Absolutely.
Meg: How long can I stay there? Because I can't take it with me.
Lauren: You if you make an appointment, you can stay all day. You can come back tomorrow. Stay all day tomorrow.
What we notice is, people get really gung ho and they're like, I'm gonna be there every day for and we notice, and you might be there for two weeks and then something will come up and you'll,
and then maybe you'll come back.
Meg: Yeah, right, right, right. Oh, I love it.
Javier: When we have people who are coming in repeatedly one of my tips is always take advantage of this while you can because life will go take you in a different direction eventually and you won't be able to come here as much as you want to or much as you you're able to at this moment.
So, so, cause things come up.
Meg: Yeah. And you, I don't know, hopefully get a job and suddenly you get it.
Javier: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Meg: But every new script. Be it TV or feature that I write, I'm always first asking about what's come before, so I feel like every time you, I would be back in there.
So I'm excited for that.
Jeff: And of course our co producer Padi is on the line. Padi , thanks for being here and for everything that you do. You had a great follow up question related to this. Can you hop in?
Padi: Yeah, definitely. So, your library is truly a treasure vault with so many amazing materials.
Like you just mentioned this incredible crown jewel, which was Shonda Rhymes pitch material. And I was just curious, what are some of the other treasures or crown jewels.
Lauren: Javier, you should talk about Empire.
Javier: Oh, yeah. Years ago Lawrence Kasten's assistant came into the library.
I've been here forever, by the way, and and brought us the original partly a handwritten draft of Empire Strikes Back. So some of it was typed and some of it was the yellow original legal. So, so, we couldn't keep it, of course, but we were able to make a copy. And I just remember that day it took me like four hours to copy the thing with my boss .
Where are you? I was like, well, I have to read it and hold it. I can't just copy it, I'm never going to be able to hold this in my hand again.
So that, that's an, that's a great jewel because it really, there's so much dialogue in there, but in, and, Han Solo's line is just a few of those words, but it's a big paragraph.
This, this long, but the essence is already there, but it's just amazing to see how it's just handwritten. Like from the head to the page.
Meg: Our radio audience can't see this, but Hilary, our archivist is smiling very large right now, loving this story. Sorry, go ahead.
Lauren: No, I was just going to say just looking at that script, even iconic lines like, do or do not, there is no try.
That's like a full. Like paragraph monologue and you're like, Oh yeah, they found it in there somewhere.
Meg: There's writing for you. Yeah. That's amazing. What are some other crown jewels?
Lauren: Something that I was like, the thing that I was most excited about when I first started working here.
Linda Wolverton who wrote Beauty and the Beast gave us a lot of her outlines memos stuff like that. Some of it's hand annotated with Jeffrey Katzenberg and Peter Schneider's notes. And it just goes to show, because I that's one of my favorite movies.
And when you look at that you realize Oh, this did not like spring forth... perfect. Like it's and like I, I a few years ago I, I happened to be like talking to Linda and I was like, Linda the Beauty and the Beast stuff. It's, it's a crown jewel in the library's collection.
And she was like, I'm glad to hear that because then people will, realize that it was not easy.
Meg: Yes. No, there is no springing forth . We all want it to, but it does not spring forth. Hilary as an archivist. What's your crown jewel or what's your favorite thing?
Hilary: Well, I can say one other really cool thing that we have, and I can also say my favorite thing.
I, they're all, everything's great. But we do have. In the library on prominently displayed in the library on some locked glass shelves. We have scripts that were in Billy Wilder's home office, his personal desk set of all of his films that he co-wrote and directed. And we ended up with those after he passed away.
And our reading room is actually called the is it called the Billy Wilder Reading Room? It's in honor of, it's the Billy Wilder IA Diamond in honor of Charles Bracket and IAL Diamond. So that's, it's a lovely like tribute to this great person. They're all, bound in a beautiful brown leather and they look so nice on the shelves.
And my favorite, one of my favorite things, I have a lot I like everything. I like it all. There's always gems and everything but there's a collection that we received or was donated to us near when I first started working here. And it was this woman who had worked in the silent film industry and we didn't have any silent film industry stuff here prior to that point.
And she had ended up becoming a story department manager. And so she would oversee, she has less writing credits than I think she has, like more. She was one of the managers of the department and she was very active and helped get. The early, very early Screenwriters Guild, it was called, in 1920, this loose group of people decided to get together and have You know, professional support each other, I think, and camaraderie and stuff like that.
And so this woman, Mary O'Connor was very active and she was the, one of the social organizers, and I just think it's a really cool collection. And so I've got some ephemera from that early time period in the twenties. And I like that, that it's. that I can say we have this woman's collection because women's collections are less voluminous than men's collections or, stuff written by men.
And I like that she that it's pretty much our oldest material that we've got. So the most rare and and I, I told somebody about it, a scholar, and she was able to write up something about this woman, Mary O'Connor. And now it's online. And now this woman, Mary is Like alive again, or she, her story's out there.
So that's one of my favorite things.
Jeff: Amazing. I would love to ask you all are reading a million scripts, that's inherent to your job. And I always like people whose job it is to read. Do you have any advice for reading scripts? And on the flip side, having read a million scripts, I'd love to hear from each of you and I guess I know Hilary, you mentioned you're reading, but maybe especially Lauren and Javier and Hilary, feel free to jump in if you'd like, what are a couple of things that really make a piece of material stand out?
Javier: I, so I read some of the stuff that gets donated. I read some of the Blacklist scripts like everybody else does, every year. And I also read for the Nichols Fellowship. So there's just a lot of I get to read things that are just being put out there by people who are not represented and people who are represented and people who have managed to sell things.
I just feel to me, it's just, does it grab you from the start? I don't think that there's a lot of room to say, oh, maybe in six or seven pages, this will get good. It's as Meg, writing wise, the first few pages are Literally the easiest because you know the story, you know where you're going and then that too falls apart.
So it's just to me what works is just seeing that everything is planted correctly. There, there's structure for a reason. But when I, when something works, it's because it's using the structure to surprise me by, Oh my God, page 10, something surprising happens.
We already know as writers and that's the structure of speaking, but it's up to you to put something really like interesting in there. Something that for me, That I read that, that's sometimes I recommend some features to people. Something that really sticks out to me is the screen, the screenplay for Nightcrawler by Dan Gilroy.
I think it's brilliant. Such a unique character, such an interesting goal. I don't even know how he wrote that.
Meg: I also think what you're saying in terms of the opening, what's interesting about that, and I think the reason people miss that, even if they start a script thinking that is that you don't really know the very first few pages until you know the end.
And actually it's, that opening scene is usually, from what I've experienced and what I've talked to writers, one of the last things to actually come into your mind of how to do it. Because great stories, that opening scene contains the whole movie. Right, and it's starting and it's setting off the engine of the movie or setting up a character that you want to follow or a million other things, but I think it's why people forget, in those early drafts, because you're just trying to figure out what this is and who the character is and where is it going and the difference between what's in my head and what's on the page.
But you got to go back, right, and really make that beginning, Something that grabs people and sets the tone and does so much work. It does so much heavy lifting. And I think it's really great for them to hear someone who's reading for all these contests that they're all entering, right? That the first thing out of a hobby's mouth is the opening, right?
And I know it's the last thing we're all thinking about. Cause we're so busy doing all the other stuff and getting that engine going. So we have an act too. But you really do have to go back and really think about how are you going to grab Javi as he's picking up your script. Lauren, what about for you in reading not just for contests and, but reading maybe some of the archived things, reading the greats.
Let's just talk about reading the greats.
Lauren: Yes. I I have an affinity for movies from like the sixties and seventies. So, I like my favorite movie is , Norma Rae , I work like in the building of a labor union. For me. Great screenwriting, it just, it feels very, when you read it it's very economical, you're not thinking about reading, you're just like, I'm enjoying myself and scripts like like Norma Rae, or another favorite of mine is The Last Detail it's very it's, it's like you said characters and, Primarily being concerned with what is this guy going to do next?
Because I feel like when I'm reading something, that's literally all that matters is as long as I have a vested interest in one person in that story, then I'll keep reading.
Meg: The Last Detail is such a good movie. I would love to read that on the page.
Lauren: The script, yeah, it's it's talk about profanity like, I've never seen so many F words on the page, but it's so good.
It's so good. And then, I read stuff, we're open late on Thursday nights. And I know Javier mentioned that we, we do professional development Friday and we'll sometimes permit ourselves to read a script, Friday afternoon. But when you're on the late shift on Thursday, there's an extra two hours and it's very quiet.
And I find that's when I like to read TV pilots. And, that's Daria Freaks and Geeks. That's my, like my sweet spot.
Jeff: Same. Yeah. I love it.
Lauren: And it's the exact same thing. It's just like a really specific, and I don't think any one screenplay can be funny enough, like even if you're writing the most like serious of dramas. If I'm not laughing I probably don't care. I think that's another hallmark.
Jeff: Personality and voice. It sounds like it's what you're talking about, too.
Lauren: Exactly that. Yes.
Jeff: It's nice when you can feel like the writer's in the room with you while you're reading the page.
You know them by reading them. I feel like that is a really special thing. For sure. For sure. Amazing. And then Hilary, if you want to share, I want to give you the chance, but totally fine. I know you're primarily just, okay, no worries.
Meg: Well, Hilary, I'd like to ask, so if I'm just a writer, a newbie writer, will I have any interaction with the archive at all?
Or, like, how is the archive used, and who is it used by?
Hilary: Yeah, that's a great question. Anybody can, request something to look at. It's not, an archive is not like a browsable thing. Like our scripts are on the shelves and you can browse and see what's there. Granted, most new things are digital, so they're not even on the shelf, but and the archive is much more It's in the back.
It's in the back. It's in like storage. It's, it's unseen. And it's not because we don't want people to look at it. It's because there's not like a way to present it the way that we think of a public library, but anybody can request to see anything. And. Basically, like looking in our catalog is one of the main ways that people know what we have, whether it's a script or part of an archival collection.
Meg: So the is in that catalog too.
Hilary: Yeah. Yeah. And and what it is. An archival collection has lots of scripts. Obviously, if it's a person's body of work, there's lots of drafts and tons of unproduced material. And then there's also, if there were letters or production documents executive memo, like anything that came along in with that script, that's part of, then that becomes part of their, that person's archival collection.
And so then what I do is I create a summary and I try to make it, pretty comprehensive and so that people know, if there is a particular movie or a particular TV show, or, person that they're curious about then, I'll include that in my description and then hopefully they're looking in our catalog and can find it.
There's the kinds of people who use the archival materials. It's really, it really runs the gamut. It's people, let's say it's an academic scholar from, somewhere in another part of the United States or someone from another country. There was that guy, Lauren, who was from Tenerife, who's working on Walter Hill, and he was so excited to look at all this stuff that we had for Walter Hill.
Lauren: Another one that that had broader appeal than just academics. We Bill Lancaster who is Burt Lancaster's son and wrote the bad news bears and in particular the thing. We have his collection and there's. What would you say, Hilary? 12 to 18 drafts of the thing and one thing that I noticed, I didn't process the collection myself, but I saw there was, his outlining of it to himself on yellow legal paper.
I just saw one day he had just written, this is shit.
Meg: Yeah, that's about right.
Jeff: Relatable.
Meg: So things have not changed is what you're saying. We have not evolved.
Lauren: It was popular. A lot of people wanted to look at that.
Hilary: Well, somebody, there was a guy who there was somebody who came in and looked at it.
I believe it was just some fans who found us, found their way to us. And I said, great, here's, here's two boxes of the thing, have at it. And then that person, I believe posted on Facebook or something. And then some other people wanted to look at it too. And then yeah, so it got some, what an incredible demand last year.
And the thing, scripts are actually really interesting because it was in this, it was what early eighties. So he was actually there was a lot of cutting and pasting, I'll say, but it was, he was cutting up pieces and taping, like the entire thing is taped together. C taking something from here and putting it over here and there's so much SCO scotch tape on everything and it was all falling off and I was like, oh, I need to make this, make it so that it doesn't all fall apart.
Lauren: Yeah. For preservation purposes. Not what you wanna see.
Hilary: Scotch shape is not not long term preservation. But so, so that was, so that's an example of fan people or people who are, doing a deep dive into, let's say John Carpenter, like whatever they're doing a deep dive into.
Meg: But you can also learn so much if you wanted to write in that genre, if you even had the time to sit and read from the beginning to the end, that is an entire year of your, I don't mean to read it, but like it it's like in dog years, it's literally yeah. You just took an entire course on that genre because you read every thought and how it moved and what he was thinking and the notes he's getting and...
Hilary: The the ending, there's like a huge amount of typed, paper of different and Versions or maybe just like a couple of versions, but trying to work out the ending of who, I don't know how, when the last time you watched the movie, but you don't know who... is The Thing dead?
Is it one of these people, one of these, this little cliffhanger at the end. And that's not the way it ended, like in the first, couple of drafts.
Meg: We talk on our show all the time. We talk on our show all the time. We're 15 drafts, man. This is where you're going to, and that you just said he wrote 18 drafts.
I'm like, there, it doesn't matter. See, this is the sweet spot. The sweet spot is 12 to 18 drafts. So just get going.
Hilary: And everybody, it's not, it's not limited to, everybody's got that. It's not just, It's not just you who can't figure it out. Everybody's got that.
Meg: Yes, and even William Goldman is needing to do it and Lawrence Kasdan is writing an entire monologue to get one piece of dialogue because this says all of that.
That's just, we, trying to convince emerging writers that this is the process and they see it as, is there something wrong that they're not really writers? And you're like, no, it's exactly the same. You are a writer. So that's amazing. And I also like that from what you're saying, it sounds if you really are an emerging writer and you don't yet really understand the difference between, say a transcript, a spec script, a shooting script, a treatment a pitch doc, if you just go to the, to this amazing place and start reading it, I would assume you have all, because you have all those different things, right?
Lauren: Yep. And the other thing that if, you know, if you're an emerging writer and say you come to the library and you just want to, you just generally want to learn. You don't necessarily have a particular script in mind that want to look at. By necessity because we've run out of space.
We keep pretty much all of our new acquisitions on iPads. So, when you come in just ask for an iPad and you have access to everything on this tablet and you just can sit down and most of the, a lot of the show Bibles, a lot of the pitches, a lot of the a lot of that stuff is there on the iPad too.
And you can just, Browse.
Meg: And what's even more amazing is you can say to you guys, Listen, I'm gonna try to write a horror comedy.
And I'm brand new and I don't know how, What does a treatment look like for that genre? What does a pitch document look like for that genre? What are some, Early scripts.
What are some shooting scripts? And you could literally just be like, here you go, right?
Javier: Yes. Yes. Oh my gosh. It's like magic. It is. We also tell people to look like if we, let's say you want some Bibles to say you'd make sure you look at several because one of those will have. The style that you want to, follow on that.
They're not all going to be the way you think you should write a Bible. Some of them will be too detailed. Some of them will just as be carried. So it's, you need to look at various things, before, for you to pinpoint exactly which one is right for you.
Meg: That's such great advice. Such great advice.
And the truth is your Bible will be your own. But by seeing all the different voices and how each one was for that show, speaking of somebody who's doing one right now, like it almost has to go to that show. Right. And how you write that show. And I will say, I I, it's also good to read because as writers, you can tend to love to write certain things and really not really like to write other things.
I don't like summarizing. It's not my thing. I want to get into a character. And go and write that character's moment, scene, arcs. I don't want to summarize the whole show. But there are people who are really artists at summarizing, right? And putting in that summary voice and tone and the show and the characters and the emotion and the plot.
That level, it's always good to read. Because you don't have to be good at everything. But you need to know what good is. You need to know what you're shooting for. And find it in yourself and how you want to write it. So I think that's amazing. I think that's amazing.
Lauren: And to that point I think there's a lot of people who come in thinking that there's one set way to do an out, like an episodic outline or or a treatment or or a show Bible or a pitch.
And the thing that I've. Realized in working here is when you see all all kinds of different examples, there are no two that look exactly alike. Everyone can, the bones are the same, but everybody does it in their own way and has their own voice .
Javier: One thing I'll say is people do a lot.
Some patrons do get hung up on I'm like, Oh, well, do I need to make it look like this? Or I need to make the structure look like that or the formatting. And I said just write it and everything else will you'll figure that other part out. But the more important thing to do is not pay attention to whether you have the correct subject, scene headings but it's more important to you.
Is it a good story? Yeah. With compelling characters in it, but but we do get people who are just obsessed with it has to look a certain way.
Meg: Which is just the brain's way of saying don't write worry about that.
Javier: right. Not to learn all this other stuff.
Meg: You got to read this whole library worth of stuff.
You got plenty of time to write. That's why I'm like, this is a balance people. You got it. I love this go, but don't spend too, you got to still write. You got to still write.
Jeff: I will say. You, we've done such a great job talking about all the things you can do in the library. Lauren, you mentioned a couple things that our emerging writers who aren't based in LA can do, but I was surprised you said they can send you emails, ask questions.
Would you want to just quickly outline if I'm listening in Ohio right now, for example, what are some things I can do right now to activate the WGF and work with you all?
Lauren: Yeah we, so while we can't, send out scripts. We were very good at answering questions. So if you have an and people sometimes, take that really generally where it's I'm an emerging writer, will you send me some screenshots from from some scripts you have?
And it's that's not a research question. Where, if you're working on something and say, I, I had this problem myself with something I was writing where I was trying to write a character with a really strange and specific way of speaking that comes off just like weird and so I was like, okay, I work in a script library.
What are like some examples I can look at, Sling Blade. Adrian in Rocky, like some, that just have we, weird like a weird way of speaking. So if you're working on something like that, and you're like, how does Carl Childers, like, how do they write that he speaks on the page?
What is, email me that and I'll tell you. We're very good at answering, those kinds of questions. So you don't have to like, if you can't find the Sling Blade script out there on the internet you don't have to despair. We can help with those kinds of research specific questions.
It's amazing. That's really amazing for our
Jeff: emerging writers. If there's anything we haven't covered, just to make sure this is, your gift to our audience, if there's anything else you want to make sure they know about the library. And the archive, of course.
Lauren: We we have a YouTube page. And if you just, search on YouTube, Writers Guild Foundation we, Hilary did during the pandemic put most of our oral histories that we've recorded on there.
We have we have an event series called Research Methods. Where we, sit down with a writer for an hour and we just talk about how they researched a project because a lot of times people people get hung up on, sometimes, there's not a lot of information out there about how to do research, and we're all informationally challenged, so we have this this this series about how to do research.
Javier: Script breakdowns are basically I think I can't remember what the first one we did, but we don't, we've done coda, the script for coda. So we basically get on zoom and go through the script page by page and just ask questions about how did you, why did you do this on this page?
Why did you write it that way? What and and I think some of the, we did everything everywhere all at once. And those are really educational.
Meg: Wow, those sound so cool.
Javier: Yeah, they're really cool. I think we did the holdovers.
Lauren: We did the pilot for Ted Lasso, Freaks and Geeks.
Javier: And that, that, they're really, the, what the writers have to say about the process and about their choices and about why they wrote that line instead of this line.
It's just it's so educational.
Hilary: Our foundation has a few more staff members besides ourselves, not, we're not very many of us, but there's a few more of us. And there's an events coordinator and we do quite a lot of events and we used to do.
All of them in person before the pandemic and and some of which would be recorded. And then once the pandemic started, we did so much on zoom and that's all. Those are all on our YouTube page. And it's a lot of panels and 1 on 1 interviews with specific. People in specific topics. But we're continuing to do zoom program programming, which is, of course, is available to everybody.
And if you are in L. A, come to our in person things. We have our big festival conference that we do every year and a couple of kind of regular in person things that we do, but we really expanded our online. Presence, which I think is great for people who don't live in Los Angeles, which is a lot of people.
Meg: A lot of people.
And w and if we, if you're doing something in live in person, would that be on your website too? Like the calendar of what your events are?
Hilary: And we we do a Friday newsletter and it's a quick, just here's our new events. Here's what's new scripts in the library. It's really quick.
Meg: I fele like we need to have a TSL event, we need to have our list of events. Come and read things and Absolutely. I think we need a TSL event more, more on that when we plan it.
Hilary: And our, and now I'm just selling the foundation. We also, with a small staff, we do a lot, we also have there's a person who's in charge of kind of our, community partnerships and our training program. So we have multiple different, kind of apprentice, or pathway is the rating assistant. Support staff training program.
Meg: What do you mean training programs? What is the training?
Hilary: We have 1 that was started during the pandemic.
Lauren: It's the Writers access support staff training program.
So we all know that being a writer's assistant, being a script coordinator, those are natural pathways into a writer's room and becoming a TV writer. Unfortunately it's very hard, for, writers of color, writers over 50. Queer writers those opportunities can sometimes be like even fewer and farther between.
So we have this program that essentially trains you to do that job. And they've had an enormous success rate placing people in those in those positions after they've gone through the program.
Meg: And that's something you apply for? We can find out.
Hilary: We get so many applications. Oh my gosh.
There were so many. It's tough. And. Yeah. The people who are in it are. Got accepted were really great. And a lot of people have worked on shows now.
Meg: Listeners, there's so many resources here. I can't.
Hilary: And in that vein, we have one more program, which is for military veterans.
In case anybody listening is a military veteran we offer a free one year, it's free and you apply to get into the program and we get a lot of applications for that as well, but it's another kind of, pipeline or networking and you come to LA and you are immersed in, in the business for that year or that's our hope anyway, is that you come out successful.
Meg: That's awesome. Wow, that's amazing. What an incredible resource you all are, the foundation is, the library, the archives. I'm so glad that we got to tell our listeners all about it. I am serious about a TSL event, so we'll put that on the to do list. Padi right now is " Oh my God". Do you, shall we do our last three questions?
At the end of every podcast, we ask our guests the same three questions. So we will ask each of you I'll start what brings you the most joy when it comes to your job?
Javier: Probably having somebody discover something that I recommended that they end up just loving, sometimes I get it wrong, right? Because, and I don't know them that well, but many times I will say, oh, if you're looking for that, you should read this and I love it when they come back at the end and say, that was really great.
Thank you. And that's, I love that.
Lauren: I'm gonna say we, we've started in the past couple of years, when we encounter writers in person, we have them write a little note in the front of their script to the person who, picks it up and it's, it's dear reader thanks for reading the script and just like a little bit of encouragement.
In, in their writing journey, and similar to Javier's favorite thing he likes, I love just randomly handing one of those scripts to somebody, and they open it, and they're like, oh This writer wrote a note to me! And it's, and
Meg: Yes, I heard a rumor you have Greta Gerwig did that.
Lauren: Yeah, we, I we had a big event a couple months ago. I had her sign Barbie and then she seemed exhausted. I was like, do you want to sign Lady Bird too? And she was like, okay. And she wrote, novels.
Meg: I'd love to read a Lady Bird script. Amazing.
Lauren: Yeah, it's great.
Meg: All right, Hilary, what brings you joy about your job?
Hilary: In the same vein as Javier and Lauren connecting a person with something that, that is like just the thing that they need at the right moment. And I would argue that's pretty much every librarian school or, point of your job is to show somebody something or make some connection with somebody that I'm helping being able to draw some threads together that they didn't realize, or present them with something that they didn't know existed.
That I've thought was really cool and just helping somebody in the right way at the right at the right time is really, it's really satisfying.
Meg: And in your case you're doing that by maintaining the past, I like when you mentioned that. That writer, you're bringing her back to life.
I think that's amazing. All right. Go ahead, Jeff. Number two.
Jeff: Number two. It's the flip side, of course, which is what pisses you off about your job. And Javier, we'll start with you.
Javier: Probably I wonder if Lauren's going to say the same thing. I feel like people assume that we have it all, that when I first started working here when we were at Scripps, we would wait until the fall because that's when all the shows would come out.
And now, of course, there's, a show on every day. And so we, it's impossible for us to have everything. And and so when one of the, one of our things of our job is we, if you make a request that you choose some scripts, we'll have them ready for you when you get here. So we do that the first hour before we open.
And there's a lot of things on the list. A lot of times that, Okay. No, we don't have that. No, we don't have, I also, I think sometimes people think that because it premiered yesterday, we have it today. And so, all these things take time to get, and I understand.
Jeff: You're like, the studio doesn't even have the draft yet.
Of course we don't.
Javier: Right. Yeah. So, It's just, I feel like it's something that's just gonna, it's part of the job. It's, it's never going to really change, but it's, every day we're like, oh, come on. I don't, we don't have this.
Meg: Okay, Lauren, you cannot say the same
Lauren: I cannot, but I'll piggyback on that.
No. But just to say that we I feel like as information professionals, we have a front row seat sometimes into how helpless we're all becoming, where we just need everything just like spoon fed to us. It's just really, sometimes people will ask questions and it's like "Girl, Google it".
That's, I you can find that information yourself it's, and that to me is just, when you think about the wider ramifications of that, where it's just no one can find information for themselves, and it's really, It can be both like heartbreaking, terrifying, frustrating, and and I'm sure that I am not the only librarian who feels that way.
Meg: Hilary, you can't say the same thing.
Hilary: No, I won't say the same thing. I will echo that I have felt that as well, Lauren. That is sometimes I just Google things and I, I'm very good at Googling. I will say that's part of my job is to be really good at Googling and searching and knowing where to find things, but I'm just like, all I'm doing is Google it.
Like I have the internet, just like everybody else, Something that I don't know if anything pisses me off. I don't really I don't get as emotional, but what is frustrating there's what, there is one other thing that's frustrating to me, which is I, a lot of what I do is like not long term, but it's more than just one interaction.
It's a back and forth. It's like a couple of days. It's a couple of weeks. Maybe, it's like an ongoing kind of relationship and And sometimes people don't acknowledge or say, thank you, or write that one last email where it's like, thanks, this was really helpful or like even telling me, maybe how it was helpful.
I feel like from a communication and like a business professional standpoint, any human being.
Meg: Or a human standpoint, all of you listening, all of you listening, listen to what she's saying. You must say, thank you. To everybody who's giving and giving please.
Hilary: And it doesn't have to be elaborate.
It doesn't, you don't have to buy me lunch, although some people have bought me lunch in the past and you don't have to bring us donuts, although we like that too. But just a simple thank you. And because, cause what I do is I give a lot of information to people or I'll do some research and provide them with the information that I have been able to come up with because I do this all the time.
And so I just want to thank you or yes, this was this great, I'm citing this in my paper.
Meg: Thanks a lot for your time, focus, energy, life energy. Yes, all of you. And so that's just a general human advice. I will say it for those people that didn't say it. Thank you. All right, Padi , you're going to ask the last question.
Padi: So the last question is, if you could give your younger self some advice, what would that be?
Javier: I would have said don't lose your writing focus before, and when I had my family I was under the impression that if I didn't have two, three hours to write I did, I couldn't get any writing done, eventually like I now have only have 40 minutes to write and I get a lot, I get a lot done, but I would have probably just said you have more time than you think you have right now that you don't have kids just step on it.
Meg: I love it. Cause kids are the best excuse not to write. It's why I had mine. Who's gonna be like, Oh my gosh, you're not writing. Why are you taking care of these children? So it's just, again, a survival instinct is having children. Yeah. All right, Lauren what would you give your advice?
Lauren: I would say to my younger self if you think you're being too passionate about loving, this TV show, this.
This play the even music whatever if you think you're being too passionate you're, you can't be too passionate. Passion will take you everywhere, so follow that that passionate bliss. That's, yeah.
Meg: I love that. Yeah. I love that, and I need to listen to it right now in my own life.
Yeah. Because it just keeps coming back around. Yeah. It just keeps coming back around. Yeah. Alright, Hilary, what advice would you give?
Hilary: Probably just enjoy the journey more, I think being a young person and going to film school, you just feel like you have to do something and you have to be, you have to accomplish something and you have to, do X, Y, Z or you're a failure or whatever it is, and I think I just I've learned to enjoy the journey.
The, and be more in, in the present, which honestly just came with being, becoming a mom and being in the present moment really taught me that but also just age and maturity and seeing what's behind and what's ahead.
Jeff: I love that. Great advice. Yeah. I feel like our industry can be so driven by arriving.
But you realize that there's no such thing and maybe the journey is actually the arrival. It's like what you realize.
Meg: Yeah. You never arrive. I hate to burst everybody's bubble. You do. Don't get me wrong. There is highs that are super fun, then you start over blank page.
This has been amazing. Thank you so much for being here. You guys.
Lauren: Well, thank you for yeah, thanks for having us. This is a blast.
Hilary: It was great.
Meg: All right, you guys Thanks so much for tuning into the screenwriting life for more support Check out our Facebook group
Jeff: and remember you are not alone
Meg: and keep writing
Jeff: and keep writing
I pointed at Meg for our listeners
