Deborah Todd & Cindy Pavlinac, Marin branch VP/Program chair

September 28, 2008

"Fun and Gaming"

Deborah Todd delighted our September meeting with non-stop action stories of writing for Hollywood. She told how she discovered writing cartoons at a writers’ conference while thinking she wanted write screenplays. A self-confessed overachiever, her story sounded familiar to every writer, pitching 79 different ideas to a studio before the 80th was accepted, but ended with a startling figure, $90,000 for a 44 page, 22 minute cartoon script, in 1993 dollars. The first script led to other opportunities and she wrote dialogue for educational games and interactive learning titles for computers. She quickly realized that professional television and movie writers sell ideas first, then write the scripts once they have a signed contract. She admitted her background in PR helped her to speak to anyone about anything in plain English, and to fearlessly pick up the phone and keep talking until she got to the right person for her writing ideas. She stressed the necessity of fully imagined characters in every kind of writing and suggested writing exercises to imagine how your characters would respond in any situation. "If you can nail the character, the stories write themselves." She also practices looking for a third option whenever someone tells her there are only two. "Never let people tell you that you can not do something." Limitations on your writing can set you free in new, original directions.

Deborah’s new book on the Games Industry will debut in Spring 2009 and she continues to travel frequently to speak at conferences and film festivals worldwide, and teach for the Writers Guild Foundation.

—Cindy Pavlinac, VP/Programsof all times.