First Draft Episode #193: Kate Spencer

Kate Spencer, comedian, author of Dead Mom’s Club: A Memoir, and co-host of fabulous podcast Forever35 talks about the never-ending quest for confidence, exorcising grief and pain through writing, and how a podcast about serums became a podcast about feelings.

Links and Topics Mentioned In This Episode

• Amy Poehler, comedian, actress, writer, and director, who is not from the same town Kate is from, but they both grew up “outside Boston”

• Early on in childhood Kate fell for The BabySitter’s Club books by Ann M. Martin, and the Sweet Valley Twins series by Francine Pascal, and then she fell for Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin and The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

• Revisiting The Boxcar Children, written by Gertrude Chandler Warner, with her daughter was a special bonding experience

• Hatchet by Gary Paulsen and other “kids surviving intense circumstances” books are so fascinating, right?!?

• Kate’s eight-year-old daughter is plowing through Raina Telgemeier’s graphic novels, including Smile, Sisters, and Guts

• The Fear Street books by R.L. Stine, It by Stephen King, and V.C. Andrews’ books like Flowers in the Attic and Petals on the Wind

• The film Grease is not actually appropriate for young kids, it turns out

• When she moved to New York City, Kate signed up for classes at the UCB Theater and rose through the ranks in the improv community

• I basically demand that Kate read Vacationland: True Stories From Painful Beaches by John Hodgman because she went to college in Maine

• The two writers I mention who went to Vermont College for Children’s Writing well into their careers are Ally Condie, author of Matched, The Last Voyage of Poe Blythe, and more (listen to her First Draft interview here) and Brendan Reichs, author of Nemesis, Virals, and co-author with Ally Condie of The Darkdeep

• On Grief by C.S. Lewis was one of the only books out there for people experiencing loss for a long time

• The poet Taije Silverman has written about the grief of caring for her dying mother, and Kate found her work while grieving for her own loss

• Kate and her Forever35 podcast co-host Doree Shafrir’s conversation on the By the Book podcast, in which Kate discusses finding Twilight by Stephenie Meyer while grieving and how it inspired her to write

• “How I Finally Let Go of Grief for my Dead Mom,” Kate’s piece in Buzzfeed about the pain of letting go of grief

• Holly Root, founder of Root Literary, is Kate’s literary agent

• Kate’s husband is Anthony King, who has written for TV shows Silicon Valley, Broad City, Search Party, Playing House and more, and he co-wrote Beetlejuice: The Musical which has been nominated for eight Tony Awards, including best musical

• Kate is writing in Scrivener, a writing program

• Elana K. Arnold, author of Damsel, What Girls Are Made Of, Infandous, A Boy Called Bat, and more (listen to her First Draft interviews here and here) said in her interview with me that she feels like she might be ready to move on from writing about anger and feminism

• A Cup of Jo is the website and newsletter run by Joanna Goddard that is packed

• Kate wants to be up front about the fact that Vinter’s Daughter sent her their Active Botanicals Serum, she did not buy it herself

• The Call Your Girlfriend episode that walked through an OB-GYN appointment

• Cat Winters, whose recent book, The Raven’s Tale, called for her to research Poe a ton. In that process she discovered that Edgar Allen Poe’s #1 hater outlived him, then wrote his obituary and his first biography, which has shaped how we think about Poe to this day. (Listen to Cat’s First Draft episode here)

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Every Tuesday, I speak to storytellers like Veronica Roth, author of Divergent; Michael Dante  DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender; John August, screenwriter of Big Fish, Charlie’s Angels, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; or Rhett Miller, musician and frontman for The Old 97s. Together, we take deep dives on their careers and creative works.

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First Draft Episode #192: Lindsay Smith

Lindsay Smith, author of the forthcoming Alchemy of War, as well as Sekret, Skandal, Dreamstrider, A Darkly Beating Heart, The Witch Who Came in From the Cold, and the Saints of Russalka series, talks about growing as a writer through D&D, refiguring her writing process after being diagnosed with ADHD, and learning to value more than just productivity.

Links and Topics Mentioned In This Episode

• Hear Lindsay Smith’s first episode of First Draft with Sarah Enni here

• Lindsay has an AlphaSmart keyboard that she takes on the D.C. train system so she can write while she commutes

• One “What if?” that got Lindsay writing Alchemy of War was, “What if I took Inglourious Basterds (movie) but it was like Stranger Things (TV show)?”

• Lindsay was inspired to write A Darkly Beating Heart, after visiting Japan and staying in a historically preserved town meant to preserve the Edo Period

• Lindsay researched Rasputin for the hot villain in the Saints of Russalka series, including reading books about him and also jamming out to “Ra Ra Rasputin,” a disco song by German Euro group Boney M.

• Lindsay has written short stories for A Tyranny of Petticoats and Toil and Trouble, anthologies put together by fellow D.C. YA writer Jessica Spotswood (hear her First Draft episode here) and Tess Sharpe

• Lindsay wrote a short story in the universe of the Blue Rose role playing game

• Stucky: the fandom name for Captain America (Steve Rogers) + The Winter Soldier (Bucky Barnum)

• Britta Lundin, author of Ship It (hear her episode of First Draft with Sarah Enni here) wrote for Riverdale (TV show) and is open about loving fandom in a similar way to Lindsay (who loves The Winter Soldier)

• Lindsay collaborated with Max Gladstone for The Witch Who Came in from the Cold, a serial story released by Serial Box (founder Julian Yap approached Lindsay about developing and writing it). The first season of The Witch Who Came in From the Cold was released as a book by Simon & Schuster

• Lindsay and her husband are in multiple Dungeons and Dragons groups, which she says calls on a whole different skill set from her writing brain

• Lindsay turned to KBoards, a forum for self-published authors, to discover the ins and outs of the self-pub industry when she released Web of Frost

• The app “Self Control” has been useful to keep Lindsay focused as she tries to figure out how to balance productivity with self-care

• Courtney Summers, New York Times bestselling author of Sadie and generally super smart person, told me, “Time is the least free thing.” (Listen to her First Draft with Sarah Enni here)

• Lindsay was paired with an artist for the Strange Romance comic anthology,

• Lindsay wrote an angry girl comic for A Soul Divided Slash Caged in Flesh, a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde inspired anthology

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Every Tuesday, I speak to storytellers like Veronica Roth, author of Divergent; Michael Dante  DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender; John August, screenwriter of Big Fish, Charlie’s Angels, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; or Rhett Miller, musician and frontman for The Old 97s. Together, we take deep dives on their careers and creative works.

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First Draft Episode #191: Ryan Graudin

Ryan Graudin, New York Times bestselling author of the Wolf by Wolf series, as well as Invictus and The Walled City, talks about staging Redwall battles in the backyard, how bad teachers inspired her love of history, and how restrictions at key times in her life led her imagination to flourish.

Links and Topics Mentioned In This Episode

• The Redwall series by Brian Jacques

• The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis and The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander were among the fantasy stories Ryan devoured after she discovered Redwall

• AIM: AOL instant messenger

• Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine was a novel Ryan devoured, and was so upset by the fact that it didn’t have a sequel that she made her first foray into fan fiction

• Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

• Bret Lott author of Oprah Book Club pick Jewel, who taught Ryan at the College of Charleston, where she majored in creative writing

• Cathedrals by Raymond Carver was the kind of high literary fiction that was all Ryan was allowed to write about in college (she turned to fantasy after graduation)

• Kowloon, the Walled City in Hong Kong that inspired Ryan to write The Walled City

• Jackie Pullinger, a woman who worked inside Kowloon for 25 years, and author of Chasing the Dragon: One Woman’s Struggle Against the Darkness of Hong Kong’s Drug Den and A Crack in the Wall: The Life and Death of Kowloon Walled City. Hearing her story inspired Ryan to explore Kowloon and to write The Walled City

• SNIS: Shiny New Idea Syndrome

• Anata No Warehouse, an arcade in Tokyo that replicates Kowloon Walled City in painstaking detail

• Bloodsport, the Jean Claude Van Damme movie in which certain scenes were filmed in Kowloon Walled City

• Ryan’s short pitch for Wolf by Wolf is: Code Name Verity (by Elizabeth Wein) meets Inglorious Basterds (movie) meets X-Men (comic book and movie series)

• The Leviathan Trilogy by Scott Westerfeld, which is a fantasy world that takes place in an alternate World War I, which inspired Ryan’s approach to World War II in Wolf by Wolf

• Alvina Ling, VP, Editor-in-Chief of Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, was Ryan’s editor for The Walled City, Wolf by Wolf, and Blood for Blood

• YALLFEST, an annual young adult book festival that takes place in Ryan’s hometown of Charleston, S.C.

• Ryan asked Alexandra Bracken, author of Passenger, for advice on writing time travel. Alex told her, “Run--don’t do it,” but Ryan went ahead and did it anyway

• Pam Gruber is a Senior Editor at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, and she was Ryan’s editor for Invictus

• Ryan’s next book, a stand-alone YA, is pitched as Lost meets Westworld meets Black Mirror (her nickname for it is TwistyAFBook)

• Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clark was one of the books Ryan may not have read unless she was in South Korea with limited access to English-word books

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Every Tuesday, I speak to storytellers like Veronica Roth, author of Divergent; Michael Dante  DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender; John August, screenwriter of Big Fish, Charlie’s Angels, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; or Rhett Miller, musician and frontman for The Old 97s. Together, we take deep dives on their careers and creative works.

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First Draft Episode #190: Stephanie Garber

Stephanie Garber, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Caraval series, talks about turning to writing to escape burnout and depression from her first job, persevering when even her Mom told her the writing thing wasn’t meant to happen, and the things that make her nervous about releasing Finale, the final book in her breakout series.

Links and Topics Mentioned In This Episode

• The North Texas Teen Book Festival, which Stephanie and I were both in attendance this year. On the sidelines, we made time to sit down and chat for the podcast!

• SASE: an abbreviation for 'self-addressed stamped envelope.' An SASE is an envelope on which you have stuck a stamp and written your own name and address.

• Twilight by Stephenie Meyer; The Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld; and Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr were among the first YA books that Stephanie discovered when she was rediscovering writing, while battling burnout and depression at her first job out of college

• Big Sur Children’s Writing Workshops, where Stephanie said they “eviscerated” her work—but she loved it

• Much like Anne Montgomery in the Anne of Green Gables series by L.M. Montgomery, Stephanie is a sensitive person who may or may not have ever exclaimed to be “in the depths of despair!”

• Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein, which inspired Stephanie to write Caraval (though the books are very different!)

• The Game (movie) directed by David Fincher and starring Michael Douglas, which has a passing similarity to some elements of Caraval

• Stephanie has said she wanted Caraval to feel like a Baz Luhrmann movie or a Florence and the Machine song

• The Great Gatsby, directed by Baz Luhrmann, from which we got our glorious .gif of Leonardo DiCaprio holding out a glass of champagne

• Stephanie was inspired to write Caraval after hearing the song “Centuries,” by Fallout Boy, which features the lyrics: “Some legends are told / Some turn to dust or to gold / But you will remember me / Remember me, for centuries”

• Legend by Marie Lu, which Stephanie erroneously believed was about a character named Legend (it is not). Instead of waiting for someone else to write about that kind of character, Stephanie went and did it herself!

• Jennifer E. Smith, who was an editor and still does freelance editing, in addition to being the author of The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight and Field Notes on Love, and more! (Listen to her First Draft podcast episode here)

• SCBWI, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, was one place Stephanie turned to for help editing an early version of Caraval (and the editor there told her it would never sell…)

• Prim from The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is the kind of sister character Stephanie wanted to avoid, especially when she was writing Legendary

• Stacey Lee, author of Under a Painted Sky and Outrun the Moon, is an author-friend who Stephanie counts on to always tell her the truth

Subscribe To First Draft with Sarah Enni

Every Tuesday, I speak to storytellers like Veronica Roth, author of Divergent; Michael Dante  DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender; John August, screenwriter of Big Fish, Charlie’s Angels, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; or Rhett Miller, musician and frontman for The Old 97s. Together, we take deep dives on their careers and creative works.

Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. It’s free!

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Please take a moment to rate and review First Draft with Sarah Enni in Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Your honest and positive review helps others discover the show -- so thank you!

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First Draft Episode #189: David Iserson

David Iserson, screenwriter of The Spy Who Dumped Me, writer on Saturday Night Live, United States of Tara, and New Girl, and author of YA novel Firecracker, talks about micro and macro humor, how unreliable narrators is one of the beautiful advantages of writing a book, co-writing as being in conversation with someone, and the merit of spite writing.

Links and Topics Mentioned In This Episode

• Encyclopedia Brown by Donald J. Sobol was one of the only books marketed to boys that David read as a young boy

• Judy Blume, author of Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret and Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, and Sweet Valley High by Francine Pascal were some of the books David read as a kid, because he wasn’t drawn to the “Boy who only throws strike-outs!” books

• B. Dalton Bookstore, where David would go shopping for books at the mall -- David says, “As a New Jersey pre-teen and teen, most of my memories are mall-related.” RIP B. Dalton!

• David was very, very into comic strips as a kid, like Calvin & Hobbes by Bill Watterson and Bloom County by Berkeley Breathed

• There’s a Bat in Bunk Five by Paula Danziger, a book set in an art summer camp that made David realize he could go to something other than sports camp during the summer Buck’s Rock camp in Connecticut

• Quentin Tarantino, an independent screenwriter and director of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction whose work made David realize that people wrote movies

• Zach Braff, actor in shows like Scrubs and writer and director of Garden State, was David’s TA and freshman year RA at Northwestern

• Miramax, Harvey Weinstein’s film production company, was where David got his first assistant job after moving to Los Angeles. David worked for a producer who played a part in creating The Cider House Rules, Pulp Fiction, and Bourne Identity

• Parks and Recreation, a TV show that I believe shows all its characters being excellent at something, which makes us like them more

• Tina Fey and Jimmy Fallon were the anchors on Weekend Update when David was submitting jokes to Saturday Night Live and first got a joke on the air

• “Seinfeld, a show about a stand up comic written by some of the funniest people in the world, but there are very few ‘joke jokes,’” David says. “They are placed in a situation and you see what this situation means to them. To me, that’s the highest form of writing comedy.”

• David wrote on New Girl, where he says he wrote a lot of joke-jokes

• The United States of Tara, starring Toni Collette, was the first scripted TV show David worked on

• UCLA Extension, which offers a lot of continuing education classes for writers

• Susanna Fogel, David’s co-writer on The Spy Who Dumped Me, which David says was written out of a “fist-shaking, ‘We’ll show you!’ energy.”

• David and Susanna’s episode of Scriptnotes, a screenwriting process hosted by John August, writer of Charlie’s Angels, Big Fish, Go, as well as the Arlo Finch middle grade series (listen to his First Draft episode here), and Craig Mazin, writer of upcoming series Chernobyl, as well as The Hangover Part II and Identity Thief.

• “I write jokes for a living, I sit at my hotel at night, I think of something that's funny, then I go get a pen and I write it down. Or if the pen is too far away, I have to convince myself that what I thought of ain't funny.” ~ Mitch Hedberg’s joke about writing jokes

   

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Every Tuesday, I speak to storytellers like Veronica Roth, author of Divergent; Michael Dante  DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender; John August, screenwriter of Big Fish, Charlie’s Angels, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; or Rhett Miller, musician and frontman for The Old 97s. Together, we take deep dives on their careers and creative works.

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Please take a moment to rate and review First Draft with Sarah Enni in Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Your honest and positive review helps others discover the show -- so thank you!

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First Draft Episode #188: Ally Condie

Ally Condie, New York Times bestselling author of the Matched series, as well as Summerlost and The Darkdeep, co-written with Brendan Reichs. In this conversation, Ally talks about what inspired her to get an MFA after establishing herself as a bestselling author, always working on two things at once, and how the 2016 election gave Ally enough rage to write her newest young adult novel, murderous revenge story The Last Voyage of Poe Blythe.

Links and Topics Mentioned In This Episode

• The Planet of the Apes movies, which were filmed near where Ally grew up in rural Utah
• Ally was inspired by a blog post by Shannon Hale, New York Times bestselling author of The Princess Academy and Austenland, where she wrote about writing 1,000 words a day. Ally was inspired by Shannon to commit to daily word goals. She started with 500.
• Lisa Mangum, editor at Shadow Mountain press, which released Ally’s first few books
• Brandon Mull, New York TImes bestselling author of the Fablehaven and Beyonders series, who got his start at
• Shadow Mountain PressChris Shoebinger, publishing director at Shadow Mountain Press, who released Ally from her publishing contract so she could pursue a bigger contract for Matched
• Jodi Reamer, literary agent at Writer’s House, who also represents Tahereh Mafi, New York TImes bestselling author of the Shatter Me series (listen to her First Draft episode here), Ransom Riggs, New York Times bestselling author of the Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children series (listen to his First Draft episode here), John Green, New York Times bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars and Looking for Alaska, and Stephenie Meyer, author of the global phenomenon Twilight series
• Julie Strauss-Gabel, publisher at Dutton Books, who has edited John Green, Adam Gidwitz, New York Times bestselling author of A Tale Dark & Grimm and The Inquisitor’s Tale: Or, The Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog, and Gayle Forman, New York Times bestselling author of If I Stay and I Have Lost My Way
• The Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in writing for children, the program Ally attended
• Emily Wing Smith, author of The Way He Lived and All Better Now, and Carol Lynch Williams, author of The Chosen One and Glimpse, two Utah authors Ally was friends with who also attended the Vermont College of Fine Arts for the MFA program
• Kekla Magoon, author of National Book Award Longlisted X: A Novel (written with Ilyasah Shabazz), Coretta Scott King-honored The Season of Styx Malone and How it Went Down, and was Ally’s mentor at the Vermont program and helped her with an early draft of Poe Blythe
• An Na, author of Printz winner and National Book Award long-listed A Step From Heaven, as well as Wait For Me and The Place Between Breaths, was also an advisor at the Vermont College of Fine Arts
• Martine Leavitt, author of Keturah and Lord Death, and Calvin,  who Ally calls “a stone cold genius.” Martine helped Ally work on a project during her Vermont residency.
• Quentin Tarantino’s advice to screenwriters was to delete the last two lines of dialogue from every scene, which Alfred Gough and Miles Millar--creators of Smallville and Into the Badlands shared with me on their recent First Draft episode. That’s similar to Ally’s feeling that sometimes she writes past the natural ending of a chapter.
• Brendan Reichs, New York Times bestselling author of Genesis, and co-writer of Virals with his mother, New York Times bestselling author Kathy Reichs, and The Darkdeep with Ally. Brendan and Ally fortuitously decided to pursue an MFA at Vermont at the same time.
• YALLWEST and YALLFest, two national young adult and middle grade book festivals held in Charleston, S.C. and Los Angeles. Ally is on the board of the festivals, alongside Brendan Reichs and Margaret Stohl, New York Times bestselling author of the Beautiful Creatures series, Red Widow and Royce Rolls (listen to her First Draft episodes here and here)
• Stranger Things meets The Goonies, the pitch for Ally and Brendan’s co-written middle grade series, The Darkdeep

• Ally’s pitch for Poe Blythe is: “Mad Max: Fury Road meets Firefly meets something really lovey.” I got a distinctly Heart of Darkness (by Joseph Conrad) vibe from Poe when I read it!

• Write Out, the non-profit organization Ally founded as a way to bring authors to kids in rural Utah
• Brendan Reichs, Shannon Hale, Soman Chainani (author of The School for Good and Evil series--listen to his First Draft interview here), and Yamile Saied Mendez (author of Blizzard Besties: A Wish Novel, and the forthcoming On These Magic Shores) are among the authors who volunteer at Write Out
• Ally and I urge listeners to Marie Kondo your fear -- go write that angry revenge novel!!!!

Subscribe To First Draft with Sarah Enni

Every Tuesday, I speak to storytellers like Veronica Roth, author of Divergent; Michael Dante  DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender; John August, screenwriter of Big Fish, Charlie’s Angels, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; or Rhett Miller, musician and frontman for The Old 97s. Together, we take deep dives on their careers and creative works.

Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. It’s free!

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Please take a moment to rate and review First Draft with Sarah Enni in Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Your honest and positive review helps others discover the show -- so thank you!

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Please share this episode on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or via carrier pigeon (maybe try a text or e-mail, come to think of it). Just click the Share button at the bottom of this post!

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First Draft Episode #187: Will Hines

Will Hines, improviser and actor, host of the podcast, “Screw It: We’re Just Going to Talk About the Beatles,” and author of How to be the Greatest Improviser on Earth joins me to talk about using his Tumblr to test audience engagement; the delicate nature of writing about a community you are a part of; his thorough approach to making the self-publication process as professional as possible; and his next (fictional) book about improv, co-written with fellow improviser Billy Merritt, Pirate Robot Ninja.

Links and Topics Mentioned In This Episode

• Josh Simpson, an improviser and teacher at the Upright Citizens Brigade training school in Los Angeles, and co-host of The Meat, an improv podcast
• Jimmy Breslin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and journalist, who wrote The Good Rat, The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, and The World According to Breslin, and more
• The Upright Citizen’s Brigade, the improv group and school founded by Amy Poehler, Matt Besser, Matt Walsh, and Ian Roberts.
• Will’s Tumblr, Improv Nonsense, which gained traction and has been featured on Vulture and elsewhere

• Truth in Comedy by Charna Halpern, Del Close, and Kim “Howard” Johnson, considered one of the premiere books about long-form improvised comedy
• Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improvisation Manual, the UCB training manual
• Improvise: Scene From the Inside Out by Mick Napier

• Bird by Bird: Some Instructions of Writing and Life by Anne Lamott, a writing advice book that Will read as a young computer programmer
• Andrew Sullivan, a conservative author, editor, and blogger who featured Will’s post, “Improv as religion,” on his site, garnering lots of attention

• The Life Changing Art of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo

• The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
• Repetition exercises as a part of the Meisner Technique study of acting

• Tenth of December: Stories by George Saunders
• “A Lack of Order in the Floating Object Room,” by George Saunders, a silly and slightly sci-fi short story that typifies his early writing and is the kind of humor writing that inspires Will
• John Hodgman, author of Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches
• In writing, Will is concerned about what he calls “The Kevin Smith Problem,” where every character sounds the same (a la Clerks, Mallrats, and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back)
• Jason Mantzoukas, an actor, writer, and seasoned improviser who Will saw constantly improving his craft
• Offset printing, a style of printing on the page that is “the way to make your book look beautiful,” according to Will, but it is more expensive, and requires a minimum print run
• Artist Maëlle Doliveux, who drew the cover of Will’s book
• Chip Kidd, a well-known book designer of Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton; Dry by Augusten Borroughs; and Naked by David Sedaris (he also has a hugely popular Ted Talk!).
• Daniel Clowes, a cartoonist, graphic novelist, illustrator, and screenwriter. His work is collected in the solo Eightball project.
• The Pirates, Robots, Ninjas theory, coined by Billy Merritt, a fellow UCB alum and teacher

• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho; and

• “Carry On, Jeeves,” by P.G. Wodehouse; and
• Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams are some of the funny books Will recommends
• Without Feathers by Woody Allen, a collection of his writing which Will read and enjoyed as a masterclass on comedy before we knew all that awful stuff about Woody Allen
• Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling with D.H. Lawrence by Geoff Dyre, a meta novel about a man who wants to write about D.H. Lawrence but finds himself wanting to focus on anything else
• Steve Martin, who blurbed Geoff Dyre’s book and has written his own, Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life (nonfiction) and Shopgirl: A Novella (fiction)

Subscribe To First Draft with Sarah Enni

Every Tuesday, I speak to storytellers like Veronica Roth, author of Divergent; Michael Dante  DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender; John August, screenwriter of Big Fish, Charlie’s Angels, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; or Rhett Miller, musician and frontman for The Old 97s. Together, we take deep dives on their careers and creative works.

Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. It’s free!

Rate, Review, and Recommend

How do you like the show?

Please take a moment to rate and review First Draft with Sarah Enni in Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Your honest and positive review helps others discover the show -- so thank you!

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Please share this episode on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or via carrier pigeon (maybe try a text or e-mail, come to think of it). Just click the Share button at the bottom of this post!

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First Draft Episode #184: Alfred Gough and Miles Millar

Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, the TV and screenwriting duo behind Smallville and Into the Badlands, join Sarah to talk about their debut thriller, Double Exposure. The guys talk about how, even after writing and/or producing more than 300 hours of television and movies, they are still engaged in learning and improving their craft; getting on the superhero train WAY before the MCU; and delivering a satisfying ending in books.

Links and Topics Mentioned In This Episode

• Bugs, a BBC One TV show created by UK-based Carnival Films (Agatha Christie’s Poirot; Downton Abbey; many others)  for which Al and Miles wrote two episodes
• The Hardy Boys series of children’s mysteries created by Edward Stratemeyer (who also created Nancy Drew)  and written by ghostwriters under the pen name Franklin W. Dixon
• The Peter Stark Producer program at USC, where Alfred and Miles met and learned all aspects of the film industry
• Laura Ziskin, producer of No Way Out, and Pretty Woman, who was an influential teacher at the USC film production program to Al and Miles
• William Goldman, an author (Adventures in the Screen Trade, The Princess Bride, many, many others) and screenwriter (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid; All the President’s Men, among many others) renowned for writing scripts that entertained the reader -- a trend followed by screenwriters Shane Black (Lethal Weapon; The Last Boy Scout) and Joe Eszterhas (Flashdance; Basic Instinct)
• John August, Al and Miles’ classmate at USC and screenwriter of Big Fish, Frankenweenie, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, as well as author of the Arlo Finch middle grade series (listen to his First Draft interview here)
• Mango, the spec script that Al and Miles sold right out of film school
• Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, the movie that made Al and Miles’ spec script a hot commodity out of film school
• Scriptnotes, the podcast co-hosted by John August and fellow screenwriter Craig Mazin, which is a worthy companion podcast to any writers who enjoy First Draft!

• Bugs, a BBC One TV show created by UK-based Carnival Films (Agatha Christie’s Poirot; Downton Abbey; many others)  for which Al and Miles wrote two episodes

• Homicide: Life on the Street, a police drama based on the work of David Simon (The Wire; Treme; The Deuce)

• 3rd Rock From the Sun, a sitcom in the 90s starring John Lithgow and Joseph Gordon-Levitt

• Lethal Weapon IV and Shanghai Noon, the two buddy comedy scripts that Al and Miles wrote before Smallville
• The WB, Smallville’s network (RIP)
• Lois and Clark, the TV show about Superman that predated Smallville

• X-Men, the 2000 movie that helped bring about the superhero resurgence on film and TV
• Christopher Nolan, the writer and director who rebranded Batman in the well-regarded Dark Knight trilogy of films

• Thor: Ragnarok and Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, two recent superhero movies with tons of comedy

• Spider-Man II, Al and Miles’ take on Spider-Man, which was a little more serious than the Spider-Man we know today
• Jenette Kahn, executive, publisher, editor-in-chief of DC Comics when Al and Miles created their spin on the Superman universe with Smallville

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dawson’s Creek, some of the teen stories that dominated TV when Smallville debuted

• I Am Number Four by Pittacus Lore (the pen name of James Frey, Jobie Hughes, and Greg Boose), and the film of the same name written by Al and Miles, and their first collaboration with James Frey (author of A Million Little Pieces and book entrepreneur with Full Fathom Five)

• Hannah Montana: The Movie, which Al and Miles produced, thanks to Al’s oldest daughter, who was obsessed with that TV show
• Jet Li, Jackie Chan, Donnie Yen, and Michelle Yeoh are among the internationally respected martial artists and actors Al and Miles have worked with

• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and House of Flying Daggers are some of the epic movies that inspired Al and Miles for the world of Into the Badlands

• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

• The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown as a model for the franchise character with a little-known job that leads to globe-trotting adventures--the kind of story Al and Miles were interested in telling with Double Exposure
• The famous transcript of Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Lawrence Kasdan talking about Raiders of the Lost Ark

• The Alfred Hitchcock film North by Northwest, The ODESSA File by Frederick Forsyth, and the works of John le Carre are among the films and authors cited throughout Double Exposure
• Last Remaining Seats, a program that shows old movies in downtown Los Angeles
• The Zapruder Film (YouTube link) (warning: depicts a presidential assassination), which might factor into the Double Exposure follow-up novels…
• Mimi Leder, director of Deep Impact, gave the guys some great advice when they were feeling overwhelmed
• “Just cut the last two lines of every scene.” Advice from Quentin Tarantino that Al and Miles swear by
• The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins and Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, two thrillers that they admire
• Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies
• James Patterson
• Waterstones bookstore in London

• The Shannara Chronicles by Terry Brooks, which Al and Miles adapted for television

• Al and Michaels loved taking Masterclass online classes from: David Mamet; Aaron Sorkin; Shonda Rhimes; and James Patterson

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Every Tuesday, I speak to storytellers like Veronica Roth, author of Divergent; Michael Dante  DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender; John August, screenwriter of Big Fish, Charlie’s Angels, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; or Rhett Miller, musician and frontman for The Old 97s. Together, we take deep dives on their careers and creative works.

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First Draft Episode #184: Rhett Miller

Rhett Miller (find him on Twitter and Instagram), musician and writer, is a solo artist as well as lead singer of The Old 97s. His first book for children, No More Poems: A Book in Verse That Just Gets Worse, illustrated by Dan Santat (listen to his First Draft episode here).

Links and Topics Mentioned In This Episode

• The Fault in Our Stars by John Green being one of the books Rhett has read with his kids as a way to talk about difficult subjects, head-on

• How being inspired by writers like Raymond Carver led to a disagreement with his creative writing teacher at Sarah Lawrence
• “The Messenger,” Rhett’s most recent solo album
• “My Generation,” the song where The Who famously said they’d rather die than get old
• Willie Nelson, patron saint of Americana music
• Rhett’s buddy Mickey Raphael, harmonica player for Willie Nelson
• Other artists giving Americana a moment: Jason Isbell; Chris Stapleton; and Brandi Carlile
• “We Could Have Been the Cowboys,” Rhett’s article for Sports Illustrated
• Rhett wrote a paper about Gustav Klimpt for his then-girlfriend, who was getting a graduate degree in art history
• John Dickson Carr, an early whodunit writer, the inventor of the “locked room” drama
• Ben Acker (listen to his First Draft podcast here), who introduced Rhett to First Draft and, thereby, the illustrator of No More Poems, Dan Santat (listen to his First Draft podcast here)
• Megan Tingley, editor at Little, Brown
• e e cummings, the poet who inspired Rhett’s dedication to non-punctuation

Subscribe To First Draft with Sarah Enni

Every Tuesday, I speak to storytellers like Veronica Roth, author of Divergent, Michael Dante  DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender, or John August, screenwriter of Big Fish, Charlie’s Angels, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Together, we take deep dives on their careers and creative works.

Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. It’s free!

Rate, Review, and Recommend

How do you like the show?

Please take a moment to rate and review First Draft with Sarah Enni in Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Your honest and positive review helps others discover the show -- so thank you!

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Please share this episode on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or via carrier pigeon (maybe try a text or e-mail, come to think of it). Just click the Share button at the bottom of this post!

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First Draft Episode #184: Bridget Tyler

Bridget Tyler (find her on Twitter and Instagram, too!), debut author of The Pioneer, comes to First Draft with Sarah Enni to talk about adventure and sci-fi, getting outside of her own bubble for storytelling perspective, avoiding the Leia-Han love story trope... and in a First Draft exclusive,  Bridget reveals the name of the sequel to The Pioneer!

Links and Topics Mentioned In This Episode

• The title of the sequel to The Pioneer!

Subscribe To First Draft with Sarah Enni

Every Tuesday, I speak to storytellers like Veronica Roth, author of Divergent, Michael Dante  DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender, or John August, screenwriter of Big Fish, Charlie’s Angels, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Together, we take deep dives on their careers and creative works.

Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. It’s free!

Rate, Review, and Recommend

How do you like the show?

Please take a moment to rate and review First Draft with Sarah Enni in Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Your honest and positive review helps others discover the show -- so thank you!

Is there someone you think would love this podcast as much as you do?

Please share this episode on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or via carrier pigeon (maybe try a text or e-mail, come to think of it). Just click the Share button at the bottom of this post!

Thanks again!