Desk of Amy Suto

TV writer who eats danger for breakfast

Writer’s Life: Finding Creativity & Maslow’s Hierarchy

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I work Hollywood hours. Up at 5am or 6am to write (depending on the project I’m working on), out the door by 8am, at my agency by 8:30am, and back home by 8pm if I’m lucky (if I have networking drinks, make that 10pm.)

When I drag myself out of bed, sloshing coffee into a mug as I fall into my desk chair and stare, bleary-eyed at my computer — well, inspiration doesn’t always visit that early. Sometimes I spend time writing blog posts, short stories, essays — just trying to jog my creativity. One particular horrible morning after I had slept for less than five hours, I just wrote “fuck” over and over and over on my screen until, five minutes before I had to be out the door, a scene hit me and I started writing something real.

So how can us writers who work in the industry find ways to stay inspired on a schedule? 
[Read more…]

Inside the USC Writing for Screen and Television BFA Program

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Nominated for CON in the Undergraduate Symposium for Scholarly and creative work. Left: Jen Enfield-Kane, Audrey Emerson, Amy Suto

Because I’m graduating soon, it’s about time that the nostalgia hit full force. Tonight is my last USC class, ever, and it’s all beginning to sink in.

I’ve been doing a few panels for admitted screenwriters and have been answering a lot of questions about the program, so I thought I’d write about what it’s been like going to school here for the Writing for Screen and Television program. The program itself is harder to get into than Harvard Law, and I’m part of a class of something like 25 other screenwriters. Not everyone can handle the pressure of the program, and not everyone will leave still wanting to be a writer.

Coming out of USC, I’ve written four original pilots, two TV spec episodes (one comedy, one drama), three features, 50 pages of a novel, and over two hours of original series that were also produced.

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in a writer’s room with Jack Hackett and Maggie Admire for a short film

That’s roughly 860 script pages and 50 novel pages, and that’s not counting the dozens of short films, short stories, and writing exercises required for my classes.

I’ve won a few awards, am nominated for a College Television Emmy, and am slowly beginning to enter the professional marketplace with two of my low-budget features I hope to get made, so the program has been a success —  but abandon sleep all ye who enter here! The program is intense, your professors will push you to your limits, your classmates will tell you that you can do better, and you get out of the USC WST program what you put into it.

Here’s a breakdown of some of the classes I took and what my experience has been like:  [Read more…]

Screenwriting: 3 Steps to Successful Worldbuilding (How to Prewrite)

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It’s an absolute crime how pre-writing is so overlooked in the writing world. Have you read Stephen King’s On Writing? That was one of my favorite writing books as a kid and I took his advice as gospel. One of the tenets of his book was that too much outlining and prewriting killed the story, which made me instantly afraid of killing my story before I could discover it through the actual process of writing.

Now, I admire Stephen King and his Everything’s Eventual short story collection is beyond my absolute favorite short story collection of all time. However, the complete lack of pre-writing is evident in his long-winded books and out-of-place endings.

In movies — and especially television — you don’t have the luxury of writing hundreds of pages without a shred of an idea of what’s happening next.

So consider this my own series “On Writing.” Or, “On Pre-writing” I suppose. [Read more…]

Miami Short Film: “Never Say Neverland”

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So some really amazing filmmakers in Miami are producing a short I wrote called “Never Say Neverland.” It’s a take on Peter Pan where Peter is a patient in an insane asylum under Dr. Hook’s care, and Wendy is a psychiatrist who tries to talk him out of his delusions of a place called Neverland.

Alexandra Mazza is producing and you can check out the project details here! 

This script is dear to my heart and I’m so excited to see it come to life. It never would have been made had Alexandra not contacted me, so this is one of those circumstances where it would have stayed in my drawer of scripts forever had Alexandra not reached out.

Looking forward to share with you the final product!

-Amy

Playing Pretend: On Set of CON and the Television Experience

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back row, left to right: Ashley (actress), Allison Kelly (equipment manager), Jon Pham (cinematographer), Joey Livingston (actor: Jonah), Sandy Valles (actress: Faye), Amy Suto (me, the co-creator), Eric Casalini (actor: Jonathan), Irina (supervising producer). Front Row, left: Avi Kaye (director) and Noah Suarez-Sikes (producer)

ON SET OF CON

Every week we have a quote of the day on our call sheet. My favorite was written by Irina, our Russian supervising producer: “We wrap by 5pm or else I’m sending you all to Siberia.”

On set today, we’re shooting in the TV station on campus — Trojan Vision — and we’re pretending it’s a radio station. Our Assistant Director/Associate Producer Noah walks with me through the double doors and into master control, talking about the poster he made for set design with the name of the fictional radio show “THE MILES HOUR” and how he designed it like a Russian propaganda poster as a joke, and how he can’t wait for Irina to see it. I anticipate her sending him to Siberia. [Read more…]