Alumni Interviews
Below are interviews with alumni of The Screenplay Workshop from a variety of writing backgrounds sharing their experiences with the program.
Interview with newbie writer Ted deChatelet
Here’s a short interview with program alum Ted deChatelet—an actor and professor who had never studied screenwriting before and signed up convinced he was going to “suck” at it.
Ted first took my TV Writing workshop and later my Screenwriting Master Class. We talk about what he expected, what surprised him, and why he came away genuinely blown away by the experience.
JILL: When you signed up, what did you think screenwriting and the class would be like?
TED: I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect. I wanted someone to guide me through a step-by-step process of writing for the screen. I thought I was going to suck at it. So I wanted someone to hold my hand, inspire me, give me deadlines.
JILL: How did you feel about what you accomplished that first time?
TED: I felt amazing. I was blown away by the class. It was everything I needed and more. It gave me structure, and it was incredibly supportive. You did a great job highlighting what people were doing well. We all came in with different levels of experience. I had very little, and I was nervous I’d be left behind or feel in over my head. Not the case at all. I ended up writing an hour-long pilot script I was really proud of.
JILL: In my TV Writing class, you were able to turn in a script within the 10 weeks. In my feature workshop, you weren't able to get one in with the time constraints. But you did get a beat sheet critique. How was that for you?
TED: It was fantastic, and it saved me so many headaches. Part of the process is you get each step cleared before you move on. After my beat sheet, I realized I didn’t have Act Three the way I wanted. It wasn’t resolving. It was great to catch that before I started writing. It would’ve sucked to write for weeks, get into Act Three, and realize the story isn’t structurally sound. Instead, I could call time out and flesh it out. Because as you (and Billy Wilder) say, if you have a problem in Act Three, it means you have a problem in Act One. Even though I didn’t finish the script, I walked away with a beat sheet I was genuinely pleased with and the roadmap for the first draft. And realistically, it probably saved me from giving up on it.
JILL: Anything you’d say to people who are on the fence or hesitant?
TED: If you’re on the fence: do it! Auditing is great — you can see what you’re getting into — but there’s no substitute for going all in. Giving yourself that gift of coming every week, being immersed, knowing you’ve got to do the work. It's not overwhelming. You can come in with a pretty vague idea and the process helps you refine it, and you get something solid at each step before you move on. And it’s supportive. One of the best parts is the other people in the class. No matter your background, everybody is rooting for each other.
Interview with professional screenwriter Janine DeMaria
Here’s a short interview with program alumna Janine DeMaria about something essential: developing a repeatable way to take a script from idea to draft.
Janine has an MFA and sold projects early on, but then realized she didn’t yet have a consistent way to generate new material. We talk about what she was missing, what she found, and how that’s played out in practice. She’s written seven scripts in my workshop in just two and a half years, and the feature she wrote in her first workshop is now in pre-production.
JILL: You had an MFA from a top film school and had already sold some projects. Why did you feel the need to sign up for my workshop?
JANINE: I sold two pilot scripts really early on, and once you do that, everyone asks, “Great, what else do you have?” But I didn’t have a process. I’d learned many different ways to write a script, not one specific way. Everything felt complicated, and it took a long time to get a first draft done, and often it wasn’t a good first draft. I was getting stuck with no map to find my way through.
I was looking for a way to establish the tent poles of a story. I could fill in the other things, but what were the tent poles? I saw your Film Courage interview and thought, “Oh my God, this is it! This is the map!” Then I took your class and was hooked from the first session.
JILL: What’s happening now with the script you wrote in that first workshop?
JANINE: My director, who’s repped by a major agency, and I are headed out next week to scout locations for the movie I wrote in that first class. We’ve gone through development, but the structure, those tent poles that I established from the Nutshell Technique, stayed the same as what I created in your class. It's a mid-level indie that's out now to A-list actors, so it's very exciting. I would've never gotten this far with the script without your class.
JILL: You’re extremely productive. You've written seven scripts in two and a half years. What’s your “hack” behind that?
JANINE: My hack is that I take your class -- I've taken it seven times, and I have seven scripts to show for it! Not only do I get your expertise and your way of helping writers find the right structure for their story, it keeps me on a deadline. I also get a group of skilled readers in the class -- my colleagues. And it keeps my craft sharp because you have incredibly educational aspects of the course that I love hearing every time.
Every single class, I finish a draft, and they’re solid drafts. There’s very little rewriting I do before I take it to a producer or a creative who can do something with it in the industry.
JILL: Who is this workshop the most useful for?
JANINE: Really it's useful for writers at any level. If you’re a beginner, it's something I wish I could have had when I was starting. It would’ve saved me a lot of time and money and tears.
It's also for those writers who have had some success but are having trouble recreating it in a solid way. If it takes you years to write a solid draft or you find yourself getting stuck, then you need a better process. This class does exactly that.
If you’re a skilled writer, take it anyway because it sharpens your structure instincts and gives you a repeatable way to build a story. It'll give you those tent poles to use in a pitch and enable you to write something undeniable. It's also just a really fun experience, and in the end, you'll have a great script to show for it!
Interview with novelist Jessica Jiji
Jessica Jiji is an accomplished novelist and the author of Sweet Dates in Basra and Diamonds Take Forever, both published in English by HarperCollins and in Italian by Newton Compton. She is also the author of How to Judge a Book By Its Lover, published by Stone Tiger Books. Her novels have won the Palm Tamar Award and the Indies Today Best Humor Award. As a screenwriter, she won the Gold Prize in the PAGE International Screenwriting Awards.
Below is a short interview with Jessica about what the Nutshell Technique helped her understand about novel structure, how it transformed a project she’d struggled with for over a decade, and why she now often writes a screenplay first and then adapts it into a novel.
JILL: You’re an accomplished novelist. What made you feel that the Nutshell Technique applied to novels, not just screenplays?
JESSICA: Novels and screenplays both require good storytelling. The main difference is that novels have more words, but that doesn’t mean you need a more complicated process. For me, the Nutshell Technique has the virtue of being simple and profound. It’s easy to execute, but the result has depth.
It also clarified something fundamental: the difference between a situation and a story. Before studying the Nutshell Technique, I often had a strong concept, but not always the actual shape of the story. Without that shape, you’re just getting “this happened, then this happened, then this happened.” A story needs to be “this happened, therefore that happened.”
JILL: Before you found the Nutshell Technique, what was missing for you in structuring a novel?
JESSICA: It was like I’d been walking around with blurry vision and didn’t know it, and the Nutshell Technique was a pair of glasses that suddenly snapped everything into focus.
I don’t think I fully understood that a story has one main character with one central flaw. Once I did, everything became much clearer. I also had trouble managing the material — the world, the timeline, the pacing. I knew other structure concepts, but the Nutshell Technique helped me see the story much more clearly and understand what actually belonged.
JILL: What changed for you once you started using it?
JESSICA: I had one story I’d been working on for more than ten years. Everyone loved the concept, but nobody liked the execution. What I was missing was the shape of the story. After learning the Nutshell Technique, I rewrote it, and that became the script that won the Gold Prize in the PAGE Awards.
It also saves enormous amounts of time. With novels especially, you can go tens of thousands of words in the wrong direction before realizing the story isn’t working. The Nutshell Technique helps you catch those problems much earlier.
JILL: You now often write the screenplay first and then adapt it into a novel. Why?
JESSICA: Because it’s a great life hack. First I build the story through the Nutshell Technique. Then I write the beat sheet, then the script, and then I turn that into a novel. By that point, the story is already working. I’m no longer trying to discover the structure while also writing prose.
When I adapt the script into a novel, I get to do the fun part: adding the prose, the thoughts, the description, the texture. But the story structure is already there. That process has been transformative to me as both a novelist and a screenwriter.