John welcomes Derek Haas (Chicago Fire, 3:10 to Yuma, 2 Fast 2 Furious) to talk about writing accurate portrayals of different jobs, and when to sacrifice reality for storytelling. They also share their time-management strategies in honor of those New Year resolutions to get writing done.

We also answer listener questions about the necessity of entertainment lawyers, how to keep your energy high pitch after pitch, Story By credits, and how to stay alive after that first staff writing job ends.

Links:

• Thank you, Derek Haas!
• Join us for the WGA’s Princess Bride screening on January 27th. Seating opens up to non-WGA members 15 minutes before showtime.
• How Hollywood Gets the Publishing Industry Wrong by Sloane Crosley, author of I Was Told There’d Be Cake, for The New York Times
• Is Grover swearing in this video? This is Christian DiCanio’s blog post about it.
• David Kwong’s The Enigmatist
• Holding down the spacebar on a text so you can move the cursor more accurately on an iPhone.
• T-shirts are available here! We’ve got new designs, including Colored Revisions, Karateka, and Highland2.
• John August on Twitter
• Craig Mazin on Twitter
• Derek Haas on Twitter
• John on Instagram
• Find past episodes
• Scriptnotes Digital Seasons are also now available!
• Outro by James Llonch and Jim Bond (send us yours!)

Email us at [email protected]

You can download the episode here.