Desk of Amy Suto

TV writer who eats danger for breakfast

31 Days of Spy Films and Television

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In honor of starting in a new writers’ room for a spy show, I’m writing 31 blog posts about some of my favorite movies and TV shows within the genre. That’s 31 days filled with intrigue and conspiracy and white men angrily hanging up the phone as Jason Bourne gets away yet again.

At the end of the month, I’ll tell you which show I’m starting on (hint: it’ll be in one of these blog posts!)

Part of the reason I’m writing these is to dig in and analyze the reasons why I love this genre so much. As a kid, I blew through five seasons of ALIAS in a week and religiously re-watched La Femme Nikita until I memorized the words. I used to hop on Twitter and Tweet at writers of my favorite spy shows and share what I loved about their episodes — some of whom were nice enough to humor 15-year-old me and respond.

What I love about this genre in part is how female characters get their due. Women can be strong and unstoppable and morally complex in a way that I didn’t see in the action movies I grew up with, wielding feminine wiles and trickery just as effortlessly as their guns. 

While men grow up with plenty of tough on-screen heroes, it’s harder for women to point to our equivalent of John McClane: women were either the victims or the wives or the over-sexualized villains. However, spy films helped to change that.

As I talked about extensively in episode #10 of writer Jorge Molina’s podcast Blind Spots, Yvonne Strahovski’s character Sarah in the NBC show CHUCK shaped my love for television. It’s one of the first female characters I remember who could kill a man with her bare hands, but also had complex storylines where she grappled with internal conflicts about her duty to her country versus her love for Chuck, and her own happiness versus her commitment to her job. Some of the best episodes delved into her troubled backstory, watching her go from the scrappy daughter of a con artist to falling into the ranks of the CIA and facing challenging ethical decisions. 

It’s not just about representation on screen: this month is about celebrating the cinematic perfection of some good ol’ fashioned spycraft. You’ll definitely be reading dissertations from me on the masterpiece that is the original Bourne trilogy before this month is over.

Ready to look down the barrel of a gun with me? Let’s do this. Read all the posts here.

Method Writing: Exercises to Experience the Stories You’re Writing

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I love collecting weird hobbies and experiences, and often joke that I’m a “method writer.”

It’s only partially a joke: I’ve been known to seek out adventures in the same flavor of what I’m writing. (See: this deep cut from my archives where I shot guns and learned about them six years ago for a novel I was writing. Baby Amy was — and still is — a die hard method writer.)

When I was writing a story about my hometown, I made the trek back to Middle of Nowhere, Arizona, and made a point of meeting up with as many old acquaintances as possible. I visited gun ranges to learn about what my characters would know about owning and firing a gun, I hung out with tumbleweeds in the desert and watched the sunset. (The sun setting in the desert is probably the only beauty I’ll admit exists in the wasteland that can be endless stretches of brush and plants that want to fight you. Jumping cacti, anyone?)

The stories I’m working on now are being continually reshaped by the experience I’m seeking out — and vice-versa. I make an effort to be a method writer, and it pays off.

I truly believe the more wildly we wander, the better our words become.

So here’s how I approach “method” writing. [Read more…]

How I Made My First $10k as a Freelance Writer on Upwork

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I just passed my $10,000 milestone on Upwork, time to pop the champagne and share some tips for those of you also looking to jump into the freelance writing world!

As I mentioned in my previous post (Day in the Life of a Freelance Writer) I do freelance writing full-time when I’m in-between writers’ rooms. It’s a great way to keep my skills sharp while doing interesting freelance writing for amazing clients all around the world, and a flexible schedule means I get to travel and have time to do other creative projects during the week (like the immersive theater event I’m working on with my writing partner!) It’s a luxury to be able to abscond to somewhere like Lake Tahoe to do some writing on a Tuesday.

I do most of my freelance work through this platform called Upwork, which connects freelancers with people who want to hire us.

So, here’s how I made my first $10k, and how you can, too! [Read more…]

Day in the Life of a Freelance Writer

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san francisco cliffs
cliffs outside of San Fran

Hello friends! I’m back from doing some travel (San Fran for work, Tahoe for play) and also just moved into a new apartment with my best friend who also happens to cook the best Italian food you’ve ever tasted.

I thought I’d share a little bit about what my days are like as I’m in a weird hiatus period for the TV show I work on, which is more and more the norm for those of us who work on shows with short orders that don’t fit into the traditional, 22-episode broadcast television season.

When I’m not working in a writers’ room, I work on my own projects and moonlight as a ghostwriter. My bread and butter is ghostwriting people’s memoirs and helping them find the right words to tell their stories. I work for fascinating clients I can’t really talk about here, but they include accomplished lawyers, former professional athletes, and people dealing with great loss and tragedy and finding strength through their experiences.

Oh, and I also write blog posts and short stories and op-eds for various companies and publications, so I keep busy. What’s nice is that I only take on work I believe in, and every writing project I’m working on I love. I also get to make my own schedule, which is so important.

Here’s a day-in-the-life of what it’s like being a freelance writer/ghostwriter: 

//7am: coffee & planning the day

I have a Google home, so as soon as I wake up I tell it “good morning” and it turns on all my lights, my coffeemaker in the kitchen, and starts playing the news. (Creepy or efficient? Probably both but the faster I can get caffeinated the better my morning is.) It takes about 30 seconds of hearing about how much of a mess the world is in to get me to get out of bed and stumbling toward the coffee that’s waiting for me in the kitchen.

Coffee in hand, I immediately get to work plotting out my day. I use a BestSelf journal to track habits, record what I’m grateful for, and set my intentions and goals for the day. I’ve been using these for the past six months and love the pen-and-paper organization. I always have a mess of projects, to-do list items, habits, and other responsibilities I need to hold myself accountable to get done. It’s important to me to get everything I have to do on paper and out of my head so I can clear up brainspace for the work I have to do. [Read more…]

Writers’ Life: How Your Examined Life Informs The Stories You Tell

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Photo by DJ Suto

Just like you are what you eat, you write what you live. While I believe that write what you know is a narrow way to approach the vast expanse of stories you could be telling, I do believe that our own experiences create a prism through which we see the world and write about it.

We can’t — and shouldn’t! — spend every hour of our days writing. But the hours we don’t spend writing still show up on the page.

Our examined lives shape our stories

Photo by DJ Suto

In my writing group, I recently dismantled the seven page outline I had written for my pilot — and rewrote it from scratch, with another character as the protagonist. This is in part because of the badass ladies of my writing group had helped me get to the point where I realized this was the best move, and in part because of what’s been going on in my own life lately. My hero went from the reclusive male protagonist to the live-wire of a woman whose life was a mess but is grappling with her priorities and how she approaches the world. I realized that my male hero was safe to write from: he was a reluctant hero, someone thrown into the story. However, the female character — as vulnerable and messy as she is — is the one who is actually moving the plot forward and putting everything on the line.

After going through a breakup, I realized that I was running from my feelings and the messiness of them — I had also been running from the messy character who was clearly my way into the story all along. So, I got vulnerable, and asked myself why I had relegated her to supporting cast for so long, and realized her story was the most dramatic, even if it was harder to tell.

I say “examined lives” because an unexamined life (aside from not being worth living, according to Socrates) doesn’t provide these kinds of revelations. As artists, we have to question everything. That’s when epiphanies happen: as things click into place after we’ve been moving the pieces around and trying to make sense of it all. [Read more…]

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