Authors

The Problem With Writing What You Know – John Gray

Filmcourage

Published

August 19, 2022

Film Courage: What do you think about people who write their personal stories, that they want to show themselves as a protagonist? A lot of people come to Los Angeles or they’re somewhere in the midwest or wherever Hey I’ve got this great screenplay idea, it’s about my life. Is everybody ready to hear about their life as their first project?

John Gray, Writer, Director, Producer: It’s a difficult thing too because the old adage is Write What You Know and so for beginning writers oftentimes an autobiographical experience is something that they know and they have the emotional connection to it. The problem is you still have to serve your audience, it’s got to be entertaining and it’s got to have enough of a universal appeal. When I say that I don’t mean it has to be homogenized but there has to be enough things in it that people can connect with and recognize behavior-wise like Okay, I’m going to go with you on the story. So whatever your story is, you’ve got to find a way to plug it into more of a universal consciousness so that it can be absorbed by people who don’t know you, don’t know your story, don’t care about your story. How does your story relate to something in my life? I don’t know if I sound very pretentious saying all this but I don’t think so I just think you should never think like my life is so fascinating that anyone would be willing to spend two hours of their life watching it. There might be great things that happen to you but I think you should be really willing and able to just throw a lot of it away and and concentrate on the core thing that you feel is the story you want to tell this core thing and then build around that, make stuff up, make it more interesting, make the stakes higher, bring in characters who are not real in your life. You can build something that might be a very good, well-crafted story but also has enough personal resonance. For instance for many years I was doing movies for television and I prided myself on, I wrote them and directed them. I chose very carefully what I would do. I never took a movie for the money or because I was very careful about what I chose, if it was a book they wanted me to adapt or…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).

BIO:

Brooklyn born John Gray is an award winning writer-director-producer of films and television, and the creator of the long running TV series, Ghost Whisperer. He has written and directed many feature films and movies for television, including White Irish Drinkers, starring Stephen Lang and Karen Allen; Martin And Lewis, starring Sean Hayes and Jeremy Northam; the Emmy® nominated A Place For Annie, with Sissy Spacek; the Emmy® nominated mini-series Haven with Natasha Richardson and Anne Bancroft; Helter Skelter, and many others. Gray has directed numerous episodes of broadcast and cable series, including multiple episodes of the NBC series GRIMM and was also the producing director of the CBS series RECKLESS. Gray’s acclaimed short films have played and are currently playing in film festivals all over the world including FRENCH KISS, which has also notched 6.3 million views to date on YouTube. He is married to writer-filmmaker Melissa Jo Peltier, and they make their home in New York and Cape Cod, MA. John’s new novel The Desecrated follows Jennifer, a college dropout hoping to regroup, who joins the night shift at the NYC Morgue.