I see that there’s a one day workshop being offered with the pitch, “Who better to teach you to understand characters than EXPERT BEHAVIOR ANALYSTS?”
It’s not my intention to diss the people offering the workshop (which I also why I’m not going to name them)—they are both screenwriters as well as Expert Behavior Analysts and sound like a couple of smart guys with credible credits.
However… If you think you actually NEED to have an Expert Behavior Analyst tune you in to what people do and why they do it, I respectfully suggest you consider another career. Maybe one not involving people.
To me, the best stories come from the heart.
Yes, we have to shape them and we have to make sure they’re ones that will be meaningful to other people as well. But generally they come from some seed of hurt or love or confusion in our own lives. By the time we write them they may have changed so much that nobody else can ever track them back to the source, but if they work it’ll be because they started from that kind of connection.
If you have an extra two hundred bucks (the Early Bird price), there’s no harm in going to a workshop like this. If you don’t, I suggest you spend the day walking around. Talk to a homeless person. Chat with the person behind you in the line at the grocery store. Have dinner at a restaurant and notice how people treat the waiter. In the evening, get together with a friend and let the wine flow and get them to talk about their triumphs and their disappointments—and talk about yours.
If you’re cut out to be a writer, you’ll learn more that day than sitting in a workshop with Expert Behavior Analysts.
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Jurgen Wolff has written more than 100 episodes of TV, several TV movies, the feature film, “The Real Howard Spitz” starring Kelsey Grammer, and has been a script doctor on films starring Eddie Murphy, Kim Catrall, Michael Caine, Walter Matthau and others. His plays have been produced in New York, London, Berlin, and Los Angeles. He is the author of 9 books including “Your Writing Coach” and “Creativity Now.” If you would like to find out more about “The Seven Things That Are Stopping You From Writing And How To Overcome Them,” check out Jurgen’s screenwriting website: www.ScreenWritingSuccess.com
