Film Courage: How has your screenwriting process evolved over the years?
John Gray, Writer, Director, Producer: It has pretty much stayed the same. I get the idea, I think about the idea. I don’t start writing anything for a while. I sometimes go Oh I didn’t think about that and then I’ll find myself in the shower thinking about it or walking down the street thinking about it, I get another little idea. I get a lot of ideas when I’m driving and listening to music. I get a lot of inspiration suddenly out of nowhere like Oh wow that’s the thing! Yes okay so then eventually when I think I have enough now to actually put something on paper, I’ll open up a new document if I have a title for it. If I don’t, it will just be a new story and I’ll write down whatever it is I’ve been thinking about just to spitball it and then I’ll start returning to that and just seeing how I can flesh that out and ultimately try to get to a beginning, middle and an end in the broadest strokes just to work that out. Once I’ve got that then I try actually writing an outline, just like a scene-by-scene outline of what happens next. From the initial page I already know where the midpoint is and I know how I want it to end but I don’t know much else so those little beats help me. Those are the most difficult things to do because you’re just pulling stuff out of the air just making stuff up, which I’m complaining about it, but that’s my job, but it’s the hardest part of it. You’re just trying to build the story and build the plot and build the characters piece-by-piece and scene-by-scene and that could take me months to keep working out and doing that. Once I’ve got the outline done I’ll try to put it aside for a while working on something else for a week or so and then come back to it a little bit fresh. I’ve had my wife read it and get her feedback. I feel like there’s always this moment and maybe one thing has changed over the years that I recognize it more clearly now but there’s a moment in the outline where you feel like Okay I’m ready for the script now. I can’t really spend any more time speculating about what’s going to happen with this in the outline.I have to now go into the script and write the script and then that’s a great exciting place to be and then I just start writing the script and I follow the outline. You take left turns, something else happens along the way, you get a different idea, the character wants to do something else so you deviate from the outline…(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.
BUY THE BOOK – THE DESECRATED
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