There’s Someone Inside Your House is a Netflix horror movie based on the YA novel by Stephanie Perkins. Shazam! writer Henry Gayden adapted the book and talks to Write On about tackling the horror genre and injecting it with emotion: "I've always liked slasher movies, but they've been my least favorite subgenre because you never really get emotionally invested in them… [Stephanie Perkins] comes from a YA romance background. [There's Someone Inside Your House] was her first horror book, so she created all these characters that were great, and I loved them, and there was a love story inside of this slasher book, and I really responded to it. And because I was emotionally invested, I suddenly wanted to write a slasher movie."

 

Henry goes on to give advice on taking your time developing a career: "I think a lot of people are in a rush to succeed right away when they're just not mature enough, mentally and also as a writer, to handle what you've gotta go through."

 

The Netflix drama series created by Ava DuVernay and famed football player Colin Kaepernick explores Kaepernick's high school years and the experiences that led him to become an activist. Showrunner Michael Starrbury talked to Write On about how the writers' room was assembled: "If you put good people in the room together, and they really care about what you're trying to accomplish, then good things will come out of it. I wasn't really looking for 'TV writers;' I was looking for people who could write TV."

 

Michael goes on to discuss what it takes to have a career in writing. "Have your own goals. Don't let anybody gas you up and tell you that you're doing great when you have your own measurement for greatness… I can't control the yes's and no's in Hollywood, but what I can do is I can make adjustments for myself in order to reach my goal."

 

Chucky is back! Everyone’s favorite killer doll is soon to have his own TV series on SYFY, and writer Kim Garland talked to Write On about what it took to get on the writing staff: “I sat down one weekend, and I watched all seven films in a row, just back-to-back-to-back. I binged it hard, and a lot of it was I really wanted to take the full journey and compress what [creator Don Mancini] had done in 30 years."

 

Kim goes on to discuss why she thinks Chucky has remained popular as a character for so long. "I think part of what's so fun is [Chucky] is this guy who has given up on trying to go back in a human body and is fully embracing the doll, but it's still a person in there that's living and evolving and changing."

 

Mike talks to Write On about his work as a mentor and the founding of his organization Black Boy Writes: "I have 11 mentees; they're all great, and they all span different genres. [We're] just breaking that myth that Black people are monolithic, we can only write one thing or we all experience the same thing, when that’s not true. We live varied experiences, and we write many types of things."

 

Mike discusses getting his first writing job with Issa Rae, and gives advice for the aspiring writer. "You have to remember that you're only as good as your last writing sample. You're only as good as your last project, so you have to keep the momentum. You have to keep writing. . . if I wasn't writing all the time, I would not have the opportunities that I have now.”

 

 

Don’t forget to subscribe to the Write On Podcast on iTunes!  

Gloria talks to Write On about her process for choosing a writers’ room. "For One Day at a Time, we wanted a heavily Latino room because we were doing Latinx storylines, and we wanted to make sure that we were specific because it was a Cuban family, but also, it was great to hear from all the other Latinos in the room that were not Cuban that were like, 'Oh my God, my family did that too!'"

 

Gloria goes on to discuss what makes a good TV staff writer: "Ultimately, if you are on a staff, you are there at the service of the showrunner. You are there to help them make the show they want to make, so how can you help them? What idea can you give them so that we can all go home? What thing are you going to do that's going to crack it? I think once that became crystal clear, everything became much, much easier for me."

 

Gloria’s new series, With Love, will premiere on Amazon later this year.

 

The Hulu series starring Michael Keaton takes viewers to the epicenter of America's struggle with opioid addiction. Creator Danny Strong talks about putting the show together in the midst of the pandemic: "One of the ways that I dealt with [having a virtual writer's room] was that I just started doing my own outlines, so I would be showrunning and working as a writer's assistant at the same time, and it would sort of confuse the staff. They'd be like, 'Are you sure?' and I'd be like, 'Hold on, I'm just writing this down!'"

 

Danny goes on to discuss how he crafts stories based on real life. "A technique I use in nonfiction dramatic storytelling like this is that there are scenes that are there as a conduit - a fictional scene - that's there as a conduit to get true facts out. So the goal of the scene is to get real, true information out, and yes, if the scene is fictionalized in order to do so, it's fine because at the end of the day, what the scene is about is a truthful concept, idea, something along those lines."

 

Don’t forget to subscribe to the Write On Podcast on iTunes!  

After suffering a stroke, Judith Albright moves into a historic nursing home, where she begins to suspect something supernatural is preying on the residents in this Amazon Original Movie.

 

Writer-Director Axelle Carolyn talks about how her personal family experiences shaped the story: "I saw my dad and my granddad both go to nursing homes, and I saw how it changed them, and it changed the way that people look at them and speak to them, and I think that when people address you a different way, you become someone else." She goes on to discuss the horror genre and the films that inspired her to be a filmmaker. "It was a combination of David Cronenberg's The Fly, which kind of taught me the power of characters and emotion in a horror movie… and Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator, and it just felt like working on that set would have been the most fun thing in the world."