Know Your Creative Rights

A reminder for screen- and long-form TV writers of your rights during production.

Whether you are a screenwriter who has already had a feature film made, or are looking forward to the time when you will, we’d like to remind you about the important creative rights provisions won by the Guild, and how you can implement them during your next project. Understanding your creative rights and contacting the Guild if the Company refuses to uphold them will help ensure you’re included during the filmmaking process. Read more >>

Ask a Mentor: Duly Noted

Paul Redford has advice for the writer asked to give notes on a script.

There is a lot of helpful info on the internet about how to implement notes you’ve been given on a script. But how should you handle the situation when someone—a friend, a mentee, your third cousin who came out of the woodwork—asks you to give them notes on theirs? Paul Redford (Designated Survivor, Madam Secretary), who leads a mentorship group with Allison Abner (Madam CJ Walker, When We Rise), has advice for those writers who dare to step into the emotional and professional “minefield” that is giving notes on a script. Read more >>

Seeking Submissions for Past Lives Column

Did you have an interesting “past life” before you became a professional writer? Connect wants to hear from you.

“Past Lives” is a column formerly run in Written By. In it, writers answer the question: What led you to become the writer you are today? Whether it was an inciting incident, a moment of realization, or an anecdote that carries through to your work now, “Past Lives” is space for you to reflect on your path to being a working writer. Tell us about the time you went on a police ride-along and ended up dodging bullets like George Jeffries (Cagney & Lacey), how you and your brother thought you were going to be murdered by a crazed serial killer while out camping like Chad and Carey Hayes (House of Wax), or how at 15 you gave a ride to a hitchhiking Janis Joplin in 1968 and went on to create the High School Musical franchise like Peter Barsocchini. Send your stories to Connect for a chance to be featured in an upcoming issue.

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