Find The Emotional Core Of Your Screenplay

*Please note this interview was from 2018.  
Jake: This week, I am so excited to be doing something we’ve actually never done before on the podcast: we have two different writers, Doug Jung and Emily Dell.
Emily tends to come at things from more of the independent film side, and Doug has been involved in some very famous blockbusters and big name TV shows like Star Trek Beyond and Big Love.

And what’s really cool is that both of these writers have transcended a lot of the genre conventions in their writing– doing everything from really beautiful, personal, character-driven stories, to big budget action movies and sci-fi.
I want to start by asking you both– when you first broke into the industry, what do you think it was that led to your success? And in the face of the commercial and genre demands of so many different kinds of projects, how do you hold onto who you are and continue to grow your voice as an artist?
EMILY: I want to say this, I am still finding my way in, I think this is a long term process and in fact maybe  that one of the biggest “aha!” moments for me being early mid-career but not quite mid yet.
I feel like my writing has grown and expanded through the help of friends who are also mentors who have given me feedback and Doug has been one of those.
And on the content side, always trying to write what I believe in and write what is connected to me, but also to see how that fits into an organic brand that maybe was part of my identity– never having a difference between who I am and what I write is a clear part of the way that I look at my art.
And I think that is what makes people connect both to it and then to me, and then makes it easy for people to be like, “hey here is this Emily girl and she writes grounded emotional genre because that is also what she loves in life.” So that is one thing that I found to be really helpful lately.
But also, as I have been in LA for a while more than a couple of years and I have developed friendships and working relationships, I really tried to listen as much as I spoke, learn as much as I can, ask questions from the people whose work I admire and whose work I seek to emulate, and use that to improve. But also if they someday become comfortable even me and want to form an organic working relationship, then that is something I am obviously very open and welcome to.
Doug:  I ended up in a very fortuitous way getting some work in television which you know literally like these sort of freelance things for weird shows, and that enabled me to quit my day job. At that time I also had a very lucky stretch where I managed to bank a little bit of money.
But I was able to take this time and I wrote a script that ultimately was picked up, then optioned, and then eventually made. And I suddenly had, in a very lucky way, both a foot in the door in the TV world and a foot in the door in the feature world. And I have just sort of managed to stay in that position this whole time, which is great.
But as much as I can say it was hard work and I applied myself, there is an element of luck. And for my case it took a long time, but I do believe that luck is a byproduct of other things that you are doing to put yourself in there.
Jake: I feel the same way with my career, almost everything that ever happened to me that was good was luck, but I worked so damn hard to get to that lucky moment. And I think one of the places where I was luckiest was that it happened at a time where I had enough craft to actually back it up.
Doug: There is this element that I always see with people in these kinds of panel discussions, or this meet-and-greet kind of thing that I have been to– you know the most often asked question seems to be: How do I get an agent? How do I get somebody to read this thing? Totally valid, totally get it. But, nobody has the same origin story.