My internship is technically a “writing mentorship” that comprises six meetings with a professional screenwriter. My mentor, Jon Greene, is a Syracuse alum who wrote forLaw and Order: SVU for eleven years and is now working for a CBS drama premiering this fall, A Gifted Man:
http://www.cbs.com/primetime/a_gifted_man/video/
Under Jon’s guidance I’m attempting to develop a pilot for a new, hour-long high school dramedy. We talk once a week via Skype (although this ends up being more like once every week and a half because of Jon’s busy schedule). He’s in LA, and I’m living in, entertainment capital of the world, Lancaster, PA. Hopefully we’ll get to meet in New York later on, as this is where his show shoots, but thus far our relationship has been largely virtual.
Jon’s depth of experience was obvious from our first meeting. I didn’t need to ask any penetrating questions. He didn’t need to give any lectures. Rather, over the course of our conversation he let little bits of wisdom slip out even when he wasn’t trying. It was instructional just to observe the way he thinks. I was thinking character and story. He was thinking character, story, setting, series arcs, show longevity, actors’ ages and more. The things that never crossed my mind were his first concerns. The questions I never thought to ask he rattled off automatically. Eventually his insight disrupted my carefully calculated plans. “Maybe this should be set in high school instead of college.” And though I resisted some of his revisions at first (mentally if not verbally), the logic of his suggestions always prevailed, and, by trusting his seasoned instincts, my work has gotten better and better.