L.A. Writers Center Announces Webinars BY Writers FOR Writers

When the LAWC classes shut down due to the pandemic, projects were put on hold indefinitely. Che'Rae Adams, the founder of the L.A. Writers Center, saw a need for writers to engage with each other, and help each other get through this difficult time: "Members of my Advisory Board started to offer up their help on Facebook to other writers, and I realized that it might be a good time to offer online options, not only to LAWC members but all writers. This is how Webinars By Writers, For Writers was born. These webinars are designed to educate and entertain, with a focus on career goals for the writing community."

All webinars cost only $25 and are free for L.A. Writers Center members.

SCHEDULE AT A GLANCE:

April 18 (2-4 PM PST): Stories From Showrunners with Mark b. Perry and Dave Finkel. Details here.

April 25 (2-4 PM PST): How to Pitch Your Project With Doug Draizin. Open to LAWC Members only. Details here.

May 2 (2-4 PM PST): How to Prep For a Writer's Meeting with Chris Erric Maddox. Details here.

May 9 (2-4 PM PST): How to Get Started on Your Novel by Nathan Singer. Details here.

What Is a Showrunner? How Is a Showrunner Different From a Creator, a Director, and an Executive Producer? What Skills Do You Need to Be a Good Showrunner? What Experience Do You Need to Be a Showrunner?

Throughout his 30 year career, Mark b. Perry has written and produced a wide variety of series including THE WONDER YEARS, PICKET FENCES, LAW & ORDER, PARTY OF FIVE, PASADENA, ONE TREE HILL, WHAT ABOUT BRIAN, BROTHERS AND SISTERS, GHOST WHISPERER, REVENGE, and HEARTBEAT. He was the show-runner on Mike White's short-lived but cult-favorite PASADENA, then for the first two seasons of ONE TREE HILL, and the second season of BROTHERS & SISTERS. As a writer-producer on the first season on David E. Kelley's PICKET FENCES, Mark shared an Emmy Award for Outstanding Dramatic Series. For his "Falsies" episode of PARTY OF FIVE, Mark was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Achievement in Dramatic Writing. For his writing and producing services on that same series, Mark shared a Golden Globe Award for Best Drama. Mark is currently developing a sequel series to the cult class DARK SHADOWS with Amasia Entertainment and Warner Bros. TV.

Dave Finkel is a Emmy Award-winning producer and writer. He is a native of Los Angeles, who, after a series of aborted college tries ended up at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in the Experimental Theater Wing (from which he also dropped out). He eventually dragged himself back to Los Angeles, hat in hand, where he made his way to the ACME Comedy Theater. There, he met his writing and producing partner, Brett Baer.

Most recently, Brett and Dave served as showrunners for all seven seasons of "New Girl," from pilot to finale. The pair started out writing on Steven Spielberg's animated programs "Animaniacs" and "Pinky and The Brain," for which they received a Daytime Emmy Award nomination. They also helped to create and produce the highly successful "One Saturday Morning," a two-hour comedy block that featured the duo performing in a series of slapstick shorts.

In 2007, they won their first Emmy (along with a Writers Guild Award) serving as Co-Executive Producers on the comedy series "30 Rock." In 2009, the duo won an Emmy Award as part of the creative team responsible for the acclaimed main title sequence of "United States of Tara." In addition to staffing on the first and second seasons, Brett and Dave eventually showran the third season. Their other credits include "Just Shoot Me!," "Happy Family" and "Norm."

Reserve a spot: https://bit.ly/StoriesFromShowrunners

So you wrote a TV pilot or screenplay, Now what?

Talent manager for over 20 years, Doug Draizin gives pointers on how to pitch your project. Back by popular demand, this class was taught at LAWC and UCLA Extension.

Doug is also a producer, known for SPY HARD, FOOLS RUSH IN and LOVE COMES TO THE EXECUTIONER. He represents writers in the Los Angeles area and is a local guru when it comes to pitching projects.

Reserve your spot: https://bit.ly/PitchYrProject

How should a writer prepare before a staffing or general meeting? How to give a good meeting and what can a writer do after to leverage the opportunity? Chris will offer you his advice on these subjects and leave room for a Q&A afterward.

Chris Erric Maddox is currently the Executive Story Editor on A MILLION LITTLE THINGS for ABC and a former staff writer on BULL for CBS.

At the age of fourteen, Chris left his middle-class home in Ohio to attend boarding school in an affluent community in Massachusetts. Growing up between these two diverse worlds influences Chris's writing. After attending Tufts University, where he triple majored in Child Development, Drama, and Spanish Literature, and living in Spain, where he accomplished his goal to become fluent in Spanish, he studied at Columbia University's MFA program in Acting. While performing on stage and screen, he joined a writing group with other Columbia alumni and started developing his first spec. Using that script as a sample, he was accepted into the CBS Writers Mentoring Program in 2015, and from there, his writing career began.

Reserve your spot: https://bit.ly/PrepForWritersMtg

How to get started writing that novel you always wanted to write! The beginning stages of starting made simple with novelist Nathan Singer.

Nathan Singer is a novelist, playwright, composer, and experimental performing artist. He is also the lead vocalist and guitarist for award-winning "ultra-blues" band The Whiskey Shambles. His published novels are the controversial and critically-acclaimed A Prayer for Dawn, Chasing the Wolf, In the Light of You, The Song in the Squall, Transorbital, and Blackchurch Furnace. He has adapted two of his novels, Chasing the Wolf and Transorbital into plays that have had produced regionally. Nathan has taught at varying universities, including Antioch University, University of Cincinnati Blue Ash, Northern Kentucky University, Tiffin University, Cincinnati State College, and Union Institute & University.

Reserve your spot: https://bit.ly/GetStartedOnNovel

The LA Writers Center (LAWC) is designed to germinate and foster new works by involving not only the writer, but a team of artists: directors, dramaturges, and actors. Provided with a safe and nurturing environment in which to read and workshop their work, writers are able to hone and sharpen their skills to a degree that would make them inherently more production-ready, and thus more likely to be produced. Bursting new talent cries out for a sort of incubator for emerging new works; a place where scripts can grow and develop into the stories that they want to be, without the pressure or expense of production. We believe that the future of American theatre depends upon its ability to grow and stretch; to be itself transformed in the meeting of bold, new voices.

LAwriterscenter.org/

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