264 | Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind, I Am Legend, Star Trek): Turning Writing Into a Job (and a Life)

We’re thrilled to welcome Oscar-winner Akiva Goldsman for a masterclass on making writing sustainable. For Akiva, the real “tragedy” is living in the anxious space between drafts. His cure? Treat writing like a job: set hours, clock out, and commit to the work.

Akiva unpacks his process – why a first draft should feel like seduction, why knowing the ending matters, and the simple litmus test he applies to every scene: What do you want the audience to feel? We also explore his approach to dialogue that truly listens, “smuggling” personal truth into adaptations, and his no-nonsense stance on writer’s block: just lay more bricks.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Meg: Hey everyone, welcome back to The Screenwriting Life. I'm Meg LeFauve. 

Lorien: And I'm Lorien McKenna. And today we're honored to be joined by one of Hollywood's most prolific and versatile storytellers, Akiva Goldsman.

Meg: Akiva is an Academy award-winning screenwriter, producer, and director. He won the adapted screenplay Oscar for A Beautiful Mind and his work spans blockbusters we love like Batman Forever, I Am Legend, and The Da Vinci Code, as well as intimate dramas and prestige television.

Lorien: He's also been instrumental in reinventing Star Trek with Picard, Strange New Worlds, and Discovery. His ability to navigate both massive IP and intimate adaptations has made him one of the most versatile writers working today. Welcome to the show.

Akiva: Thank you, it's exciting to be here. I mean, I'm not technically there. I'm really here, but I'm excited to be here, there.

Meg: There. Zooming. Zooming.

Akiva: Yes, zooming.

Meg: We are so excited to have you here. Huge fans. I already let you know I'm a little, we're a little starstruck, but we will muscle through. But before we dive into your brain and all of your amazing craft insights, we want to talk about our week or what we call adventures and screenwriting. Lorien, you go first. So, how was your week?

Lorien: So, I had a good week. It was a hard week though. I did some voice acting, and I got paid for it, and I got positive feedback, and I forgot how much I loved that. The, you know, voice acting and getting paid and then getting the validation. 

And just that little bit of, you know, great reading on that line kind of kept me going for the rest of the day. And that's, and then I am also working on developing some feature projects with people that I really admire and have fun working with.

And, you know, they like my ideas and are telling me that. And again, that feels, like, exciting. And I'm realizing that this whole, working by myself thing without any collaboration is really hard for me. Again, I think I say this on every single episode, I so want that, and I so need that, because it makes me feel so lonely, and alone, and adrift without it.

Because something else is going on with me this week. Unfortunately, I'm in a space where I'm really feeling my feelings, and naming them, and actually experiencing growth, which is making me have more feelings. And it is something I have been actively, consciously and subconsciously avoiding for, probably my whole life.

But instead of all those feelings sort of all erupting and drowning me, I'm actually ready, to like, feel them and, right, they didn't kill me. I thought it would kill me if I, like, let myself experience grief or sadness or articulate how I felt. But it's actually making me feel safer, and calmer, and able to even receive the positive feedback, and the compliments, which is something I have struggled with my whole life, and it's really unexpected. 

And I've been having these moments where I'm like, ‘oh, what's this feeling? Is this happiness? Is it’ – well, not happiness – ‘contentment?’ It's been very strange. But I don't hate it. And I'm trying to take the compliments and say like, ‘okay, instead of trying to flip it around, like, I did a great job on the voice acting, but we'll see if they cast someone else.’ 

Like, I'm trying not to do that. Trying to just be like, ‘it was good. I feel good.’ And even these two little things that are good, well, voice acting and having emotional growth, ugh. Right? But, and, even like getting paid for some voice work has felt like, has felt like, ‘oh, there is something I can do creatively,’ while all of my pitches out there are hanging. So, yeah, that was my week.

Meg: It is a hard year. It's a hard year for so many writers. 

Lorien: Yeah. 

Meg: Just, you know, such a reduction in what's happening in our industry, so, that's amazing. So, Akiva?

Akiva: I had a fine week. About every seven months to a year, I become convinced that I will never work again. And then, I am drowning in utter fear. And so I call up anybody who is collaborative with me when it comes to finding a job. And I, you know, I try not to spill the panic onto them. 

And that happened, about a month ago. And when I was younger and, I still didn't have hair, I mean, I might have had some hair, not this little hair, but I used to do these production rewrites, you know, where they sort of helicopter you into a thing and you know. And so, I was like, well, there must be production rewrites out there. And everybody says to me, well, there aren't, or there are two, and you can't get them because you haven't been doing them for 20 years.

And you know, and the business is so contracted right now, for all of us. And I was like, ‘oh no, there must be. There must be. And they were like, okay, well there's one, it's a derby.’ And I was like, ‘okay I'll do a derby.’ So I read the script and then I did it. And then I, so, and then I, of course, you know, I get the job, which is the greatest, worst news on the planet. 'Cause then you actually have to do it, right? I mean, getting it is the good part.

Meg: Exactly.

Akiva: So, but for me, you can't tell because you can hardly see me, but I'm missing the sports gene, right? I neither have the ability to do a sport, the interest in a sport, I'm absent sportiness. But this is my sport.

So I have been writing ten hours a day. I've been feeling very grateful, because it's such a tough time to have a gig. And I like it. I do, I'd say so. That's fun. I'm feeling, and it's a kind, I forgot the upside of this kind of work, which is, it's not, it doesn't take your entire soul, it just takes like a third of it.

So that has been a pleasure. And my youngest daughter got a dog. Our third, my biggest dog is 165 pounds and this one is under a pound, so– 

Meg: –Oh my God–

Akiva: –So, hi jinks have ensued. But otherwise a good one.

Lorien: Is it a puppy? How was it that small?

Akiva: Yeah. Well, it's apparently that is.

Meg: Like a toy dog.

Akiva: A Pomeranian is this big, and a Newfoundland is that times 55.

Lorien: Oh wow.

Meg: I love it. I love it so much. My week is pretty simple and short, because my writing partner and I turned our script in to the studio three weeks ago and have heard not a drop. 

Lorien: Did you get the ‘received we'll review’ or nothing? 

Meg: We got the ‘received,’ we got the ‘can't wait to read it.’

Lorien: Okay. 

Meg: Which makes you think they're gonna read it. Now I'm in the head game space of, well, ‘clearly they don't like it. They don't know what to say to us. They don't know how to say it. They're having other people read it so somebody can help them know what to say to it.’ Like my gremlin brain is just firing on all cylinders.

Then I try to get the other part of my brain over like, listen, ‘your really good friend Chris, who writes tons of studio movies, tells you it's a month, it's a month for them to get back to you. It's not unusual.’ And I'm like, ‘but they said they were excited to read it! They were asking us to turn it in!’ I have this war going on, which is all about self-protection.

It's a survival instinct, survival instincts kicking in, you know. Every side of the survival instinct is working. Freeze, fight, flee. I'm ready to a fawn, which is the new one. But, I, you know, I don't even, there's nothing to do, being on pins and needles. And I think the one thing I reflected is, you know, a lot of times friends ask me to read scripts or, friends of friends or you know, you get hooked up with people who ask you your scripts and it really isn't fair of me how long I take to read them because they are feeling this way.

And sometimes you forget 'cause you're like, ‘oh my God, I gotta read that script. And I'm so busy’ and you know, I can't change the studio system. I can't change if the boot is coming, as Lorien and I like to say, where you turn in the script that you love and you like and you've given part of your soul to, and then a big bad boot comes out of the sky and hits you in the head and it's like, ‘we don't like it. We don't get it, you know, does it have to be a heist?’ 

Whatever, and you're like, ‘oh my God, isn't this what you bought?’ Or they're gonna like it. I don't know. But three weeks is not a good sign. So I'm just trying to breathe.

Lorien: But you just said, it's a month and now you just said three weeks is a good sign. 

Meg: I know.

Akiva: Yeah. You're, I mean.

Lorien: Your brain is literally doing it right

Meg: I know I'm gonna do it live in person for everybody. Right?

Akiva: So you, so, so, so you're, I mean. 

Meg: Am the only one? Are you like this Akiva? Do you turn it in and you're like, I don't care, or is this just me?

Akiva: No. Not at all. I, you know, and sadly, you know, none of these things ever go away, right? From the moment in the process where you're sure that everything you're doing is shit. And you'll be found out to, you know, the, you know, you hand it in and then, you are just convinced that the, that you and it are failures, and that every moment that ticks on is more proof of that. 

And you know, somebody once said something to me which has really mattered, which is no news, is just no news. You know, and in a funny way, we can't tolerate that. So, we imbue it with value. But it really is no news. And it, and the business is also, the vagaries of the business, as they shift, contribute to some of these real sort of internal horror shows, everybody has been fired. So there are two people to read fifty scripts, not four.

And yes, they did mean it when they said they wanted it, but they meant it also so they could check off the fact that they didn't have to want it anymore, they could have it.

Meg: Right. 

Akiva: And now there's their whole process, which is entirely independent from ours, but is also not without complexity. And are they ready to read? And how do they read it? You know, their procrastination, how they put it off, and that's compounded or multiplied depending on how many lunch trays it has to go up before it comes back to you. 

So, so really the tragedy and small-t, but actual ‘t’ of a writing life is not being able to take the moments between, and enjoy them. 

Meg: I know.

Akiva: And instead be fixated on the anticipation of the result. Because, that will be for the rest of your life, if you write for the rest of your life. And that's a terrible waste of the precious commodity, which is time to live, between the writing.

Meg: Yes, and I did try, I am like, you know what always saves me is go back to a story. Go back to a story. Do what you love. 

So, I started to work on the new idea, and I can for like an hour really be in that new idea and enjoy it, and then the gremlin arrives. And it's like, you know, ‘I'm not sure why you're doing this, because clearly they don't like that one.’ It's just, it's almost some sort, like I said, survival instinct.So I'm just giving myself a break. I'm just gonna be like, this is what it is. 

Akiva: Yeah. You know, it's self-protective, right? ‘I won't get hurt by them, I'll hurt me first.’ You know, I would say that the best thing to do if you can, is just, don't do anything for a second. Like, you know, that–

Lorien: –that's like a threat to Meg, honestly. You just threatened her.

Akiva: Yeah, and I understand. And you know, there is that great saying, don't do something, just sit there. Like, you know, actually, your writing is served by not writing between the writing and I mean, you know this, writing has to actually be a job. If you turn it into anything other than a job, it can be the best job in the world. And it can be wildly expressive, and should be, and very personal in whatever way you make it personal. 

But, if you don't make it a job, then at any moment you could be writing. Therefore, at any moment that you're not writing, you can tell yourself you're failing. Right? And that's pretty unsustainable.

Meg: Yeah, that's such great advice. Oh my gosh, amazing.

Lorien: It's really hard. Like I love that. It's really hard though when we've sort of all had experiences in that toxic, performative, work culture. Where you're expected to do the thing, you know, 15 hours a day, and if you don't do it, you're replaceable. And there's a line around the block of people who will take your place. Right. 

And writing feels, and I'm not talking about competitive with each other, but it just feels like, you know, with the bakeoffs, and there's so few opportunities, that it does feel competitive, and I have to be generating, there's that sort of mechanism working inside of u,s because of the culture that we're in, you know, which is hard to do what you're talking about which is ‘this is my job and now I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna meet whatever I whatever standard I needed to meet to feel good about my day, so I can go do something else.

Akiva: And that can be yes. And fundamentally we can all agree that if you only wrote, that would not be a lie. Right? 

I was once fortunate enough to sort of be talking to Stephen King and I said, who is like a hero of mine. So I was basically just making lip sounds, but at a certain point, I asked him some question or other, and he said, ‘well, right now I'm just a life support system for a novel.’ And I thought, oh, I know that feeling. Right. 

You know, I think. If we were, if you wrote 20 hours a day, that would be bad, right? We would agree that writing 20 hours a day would be bad, and probably writing an hour a day isn't really sufficient, but that means that somewhere in between there is the correct number, and it really needs to stop at that number.

And if it doesn't, then you're actually expressing something else that isn't about your writing. It's about your fear and about your insecurity and your desire to accomplish all of which we have. Which is why we're constantly in this struggle. But you have to be aware of that. 

Because, and I know this because, you know, I used to, I would wake up in the morning, I put on a bathrobe, get to the computer, light the cigarette, work until lunch, eat a can of tuna over the sink, go back. Write, write, write, you know, until I had written myself to the point where I felt like it was okay to drink because that was the only way I could disconnect from it, and…you know, that's not winning a battle. It's just fighting. 

So, there is, there are ways to modulate early on, and if you don't find them, then you won't modulate later on either. You'll just keep doing that because that will be how you know how to write. So some actual discipline, self-discipline, everybody's like, ‘well, if I'm writing all the time, I'm discipline. Not really.’ The truth is, can you build structure to your writing life? That's self discipline.

Meg: I love that phrase. That's not winning. That's fighting. 

Lorien: You're making me have feelings again. I thought I was gonna put them aside for like an hour. 

Meg: No. Come on. This is Akiva Goldsman. 

Akiva: Feelings are bad.

Meg: Totally. All right, so we're, we wanna start right off the bat with something we read that we loved, which is your five secrets to success. 

So the first one was, at some point during the writing of your script, it will become clear to you that what you have written makes no sense and that you cannot actually write at all.

Akiva: Yes, no I, that's sort of what I was referring to earlier, which is, you know, we're sort of trying to make all these things cohere in our head and on the page and, you know, it's. It's just a weird imaginative act, and pieces are there, and pieces are not yet there. 

And you know, and somewhere for me, typically about two thirds of the way through the process, I just really realize that I just don't know what I'm doing. I, it doesn't make any sense. And it's just ridiculous, these things and why, and they don't have anything to do with each other. And if there's dialogue, and nobody would talk like that. And, you know, and I'm, and I used to get very scared. 

And I would kind of, you know, have the, I gotta start to, I have to throw it away. And over time I just realized, oh. Oh, this comes with it. This conviction comes with the process, like the horror of feelings, Lorien. If you sit with them, then you metabolize them, right? So this is also true of that chaos of, ‘oh God, I suck,’ is just a little bit of the pieces trying to perform and colliding against each other and then finding a form.

So, so I think. For me anyway, it became very important when I was younger before medication. I used to get depressed a bunch. You know, and so depression scared me. You know, and I've been Medicaid for, you know, decades now. And so now if I get depressed I'm like, ‘it will pass.’ You know, 'cause I used to think, well this is clearly it, now, for the rest of my life I will feel this way. And what shall I do? Nothing good. 

And instead, you kind of go, okay, I'll feel better tomorrow, or the day after. And that's true about the chaos in, for me, in the process of putting an object together, an narrative object together, which is, it's broken at some point, irrevocably in your mind, and if you wait and continue, it will reform. It wasn't really broken in the first place.

Lorien: Love it. The second one, and you've talked about this a little bit, writing is a job. It's a great one, but it's still a job.

Akiva: Yes. So that's, yeah, I mean that is that, which we were just discussing, which is I do think that you really have to be careful with not creating parameters for your work life.

I, you know. I think that this has become, these boundaries have clearly gotten very diffuse, you know, and permeable as life has gone on, and the joys of the interweb have arrived. But I do think that it's really important to have time between things. And as I said to you earlier, if you don't know when you should be writing, then you should be writing, at any moment you feel anxious about you. And that will fuck you up. 

So, you know, my pitch is: it's a number of hours. And they're consecutive. And if you miss them, you missed work, and you gotta do it tomorrow. And if you're finished. Clock out. Even if you still have more to do, literally just treat it like a job, and you will find much more comfort with it. It won't dig at the back of your brain as something unfinished and undone the way it can.

Lorien: I have a question about that. There are a lot of writers that listen to the show who are emerging writers who have other jobs and other things to do. What is your advice to them? They may have like five hours a week or just on Saturday. Same rules? 

Akiva: Sure. Yeah. And by the way, an hour a day is awesome. Like if an hour a day. So if you could do either right? If you could do five hours in one day or an hour a day. If you have the choice, do an hour a day because there's, you know, you're also fostering your, you're building habits. Right? And so, and this is a, you know, I.

A lot of writing is about building habits and about, you know, the kind of cognitive and imaginative musculature. And some of that is the return to it, right? The service, you know, the comfort with coming and going. And so I do think, that, if you could write an hour a day, by the way, if you could write a half an hour a day every morning, by the way, five days a week, take the weekends off if you can.

That's ideal. And over time. You'll, those hours will stretch because you'll have the opportunity to have them stretch, but you'll already be seated and ready and that will be an advantage for you, I think.

Meg: Wonderful. All right. The next one was ‘I try to work out structure first.’ So now we're into craft a little bit, which I love to pick your brain about this, your process.

Akiva: I do, I try to, we have all had writing teachers who have said to us, writing is rewriting, and it's true writing is rewriting. And I don't particularly like a blank page. I'm not sure anybody does, my friend Michael Chabon does, by the way, Michael Chabon loves writing. 

They're like two, you know, they're like two of those people in the universe and one of them is Michael. And he's just like, at the end of the day, he sits down on his bed, his wife I yell at does to do a thing. And he's like, type type type. And I'm like, really? Fuck you. Like he loves it. And I'm like, you're not supposed to. And he wins Pulitzers. 

But short of that you know. There's a, writing can be a fraught process, and certainly the beginning of things for some of us is for fraught. So, what I do is first I do a beat sheet of just sentences like this is, you know, and then, then I write 10 pages a day. 

This is when, in this particular phase of my process, I don't do hours. I do pages, I do 10 pages a day as fast and as poorly as I possibly can. Literally, just sometimes there's scenes, sometimes in the description, just trying to get something that adds 120 in the corner. You know, I'm just trying to get through it. 

And once I have that. Right in, in my youth, there would be weight to it. Now there's just a number on a screen. But then I start rewriting and that's actually the beginning of the process for me. And part of what that has done is, as I've laid down the structure really, 'cause the, really, it's just the order of scenes is really what's sort of the thing that wants to stick a little bit in that first run through, you know, I'm building the house and then I can start to decorate the rooms because I don't want to do them at the same time. 

Richard LaGravenese famously, you know, wrote, just kept rewriting Fisher King with no idea who the protagonist was with the, by the way, one of the most beautiful screenplays that you'll read, and movies you know, that you'll see, in my view.

And he's a ‘dear guy,’ and I would jump outta a window if I were just trying to figure it out as I was typing. So I can't write, I'm a failed fiction writer because like that, how do I get in, how do I get out stuff, oh, terrifying.

Lorien: So in relation to that, sort of that, so we call that sort a ‘barf draft’ where you just gotta get it all out, dump it all out, so then you have something to actually look at. Have you ever had the experience where, midway through, it changes away or deviates away from your outline? Or you find yourself wanting to follow a path that's not in your outline?

Akiva: Yeah. I have now, I will say that. Ultimately, and this is a sort of McKee notion. I've, I, so let me be very clear. 

I'm, I am the product of so many writing teachers, like I am, any writing teacher I could get, I got. And I really am a failed fiction writer. I went to, you know, graduate school at NYU for fiction. I had Margaret Atwood and Russell Banks and, you know, E.L. Doctorow, like, you know, I just wasn't good enough. 

But I really, you know, I learned about form, and then when I took McKee, I learned about the screenplay form, which is clearly far more predictable than novel or short story or pop. So you kind of want to know what your ending of a screenplay is, before you get in there. 'Cause that, by the way, that's where LaGravenese was like ‘it's gonna go somewhere.’

So if you do kind of know your ending, then even if it deviates while you're sort of doing your barf draft, even if it's deviating from structure, you're gonna have to kind of wind on back there. If it's suddenly giving you a new ending, now you're now, you now sort of all bets are off and you might have to re-outline

Meg: Yeah, start over. 

Akiva: In my view.

Meg: The next one is your words matter, not just the dialogue.

Akiva: Yeah, this is a really, it's an interesting fine line to walk, but an important one, I think. So, because I'm old, and because I got to write at a time where people printed things and because I was lucky enough to get folks to go, ‘ooh, that one is supposed to give him some pretty prize or something.’ They published the screenplays.

And I used to ask for scripts all the time before I was a screenwriter to see what they read like, and it took me years to realize that the drafts I was reading were not the drafts that sold. So the draft I am reading, I have already workshopped with, you know, Cinderella Man, Ron Howard and I are in conversation endlessly. I'm rewriting this, I'm doing that. Then Russell and I make the, and it's becoming a very utilitarian document. 

The screenplay that you write, and by the way, that can be rewrite. I rewrote Cinderella, but what your first draft is a seduction. Like any other piece of writing, it is there to welcome the reader into the idea of the movie, and it wants to create in the imagination of the director the movie you see so that then he can make the movie he sees. 

So it's evocative and sound matters, prose of matter. Now it's also minimalist. You can't do what you could do in a novel. But you also don't or shouldn't just do the kind of very minimalist cut to, you know, by the way, the sort of this, the screen direction nonsense that nobody needs in a script, what you want to do is you want to have the reader, like any reader, feel like they're in sure hands. 

That the narrator who will go away, you will be replaced by the director as the narrator, but in the creation of the script, not the movie, that's your job. You’re the narrator, you have to get into their kishkas, as my mother used to say, which is a, if you combine your genitals and your heart into one organ, that's what Kishkas would be.

And, and move your hands around and they have to feel safe, or scared, or excited, by you and feel like it's okay that you're there. So you have to figure out how to be welcomed in, and that's your words, not just your dialogue.

Meg: And I think this, that's the fifth one speaks to the same thing, which is when you feel. What you feel when you're writing a scene is what the reader will feel when they're reading it is exactly what you just described.

So I'm gonna jump to my question for you because I just, I need to ask you. So, a lot of times when we talk to emerging writers, there's this disconnect between, this is the interior of the character and they feel very connected to it, but they have a very hard time externalizing it into action, into behavior into something visual that we actually can see.

And so I'd love your kind of insight into when you do that, like especially as somebody who began as a novelist, you probably have a lot of interior thoughts for your character. Is it just something that you've worked as a muscle to externalize that or, and is there anything way you think about it?

Akiva: So, and I never was a novelist, I'm a failed short story writer, which is worse. But you know, I'll back up a beat to answer the question, which is I was not a particularly talented young writer. 

I mean, I won a prize once my freshman year in college, but totally by accident and then kind of really never progressed. And I was trying to hear other voices and parrot other voices and it took me a long time to find my way. 

And I do think that the answer to your question is sort of the answer to the question of writing in general, which is, it is like sit-ups, if you do it enough, you will experience change. Like it's just the truth of it. There are like a thousand bad pages you have to write through before you're a good one, right? But it really does happen. It's kind of magic. Or it's just exercise, right? It's magical work. 

So, I don't actually think visually, to answer your question, I think about story and I think about character, and I believe in setting. You know, I think that it's nice to imagine your people in places that are useful for your story. That's about it. I don't really do more than that. 

And I let somebody who's better at that do that. I just want to make people scared, or cry, or move them. And, how that gets done outside of the most basic set of visual cues, it's none of my business. They'll work it out. Or they'll call me and we'll talk about it.

Lorien: I have a question, a little bit about that. How much of yourself, like your own emotions, your past, your fears, are you putting into a piece of what you're writing? You said it takes a third of your soul, so how do you give a third of your soul into it and protect the other two thirds?

Akiva: Yeah, so the production rewrite takes a third of my soul. My actual, like when I'm like, so, I'm a smuggler, I'm a serial adapter. I take other people's stories and I marry them with my own. I think probably the most recent example of that is a show that I did on Apple called The Crowded Room, which is a story of a guy with multiple personality disorder who was a famous case.

It's a famous unmade novel, story, biography by a guy named Daniel Keyes, who actually wrote this wonderful short story called Flowers for Algernon, which everybody read in high school, which then became a movie called Charly with Cliff Robertson. 

So, but you know, almost universally, like 99 point something percent, which probably suggests a reporting error, of the documented cause for multiple personality disorder is sexual abuse in childhood. And I was sexually abused in childhood. So even though I don't have multiple personality disorder, I took this book, and I took all my and I right? And I smuggled it in. So suddenly I moved him from Iowa to Brooklyn Heights where I grew up.

So you know, so A Beautiful Mind is about a guy named John Nash and a beautiful book that Sylvia Nasar did. It's a biography, but it was only about John's exterior life, 'cause John didn't really participate. So, I mean, he was there, but he was, you know, not in the, he was not that forthcoming. He was willing, but not forthcoming. 

So I took that, and then the fact that I grew up in a group home for mostly disturbed children my parents founded it. So I was this kid in, amongst, children who were less…typical. So I took the idea of a very labile view of reality, that was mine, pushed it in, created some invisible people. Luckily Paul Bentley played one of them, and who doesn't want that? 

And, so, it's all deeply personal for me, deeply personal, but not strictly autobiographical. I'm about the truth about the facts. And, so, for me, my truths are in there, but the architecture is a combination of me and someone else. It's easier for me, somehow, than to do straight autobiography for, some reason.

Lorien: How do you not get lost in it? Like, you know, you have a feeling, or a flashback, or a memory that kind of creeps up and you're like, ugh. How do you protect yourself from that? No

Akiva: I don't, you shouldn't protect yourself from that. That's what you want. Right? Like, you need so. You understand that the Love Boat, episode 43, is somebody's best fucking look. Somebody is sitting there hammering at that keyboard going, Captain Stubing and Julie, this week when Isaac stick up and they mean it, right? Like, it, they're not phoning it in if they, so the full commitment of your heart and soul is the only thing that's gonna make your work matter.

How you do it, and how you deliver that, and where impulse and art meet craft, you know, that's the salad dressing we're all trying to make, right? But no, you have to, it's, as you said earlier the, what you feel when you write it, it makes no sense, right? Like, you sit there and you write a thing and you cry.

Then somebody on an airplane, some is reading little letters and they're crying. I mean, that's actually magic. It shouldn't work, right? So it's a conveyance of emotion. If there's no emotion to be conveyed. Then where do we do it?

Meg: Is that, you've written across so many genres. I mean, it's just amazingly spectacular from sci-fi to YA to romance. I mean, so many. Is that, I would assume that personal attachment is the window in so that you can write within that genre. Does any part of your brain then want to learn that genre? Or do you just go for it? Do you do any kind of work of, well I've not written a YA before, I should watch a bunch. Or do you just go on kind of gut?

Akiva: I mean, I, so mostly I don't talk about production rewrites. I name them at this one I do because Russell outed me endlessly in the New York Times. I did a bunch of work on Master and Commander and, that I had to like, I was like, what? Boats and what? And sword and ah! Right?

But, and I don't write comedy despite the fact that I can be funny on a good day. I don't, I can't inhabit it. I'm just too jewy, and it's, there's more pathos. But I think that other, I typically work in spaces that I kind of know, you know? I mean, and I haven't, there are spaces I haven't worked in for sure, and I'm not at this point, I mean, clearly westerns are sort of an interesting thing and they mean things to people. No, not to me. 

You know, so, I just sort of, because what I'm doing mostly is just stories about fields, anyway. So the genre stuff is a little bit costuming. That's simplistic. But I do like, the emotional connectedness has to be there, and that sort of lets you kind of navigate any construct, I think.

But you shouldn’t not know the genre, right? I mean, you should understand the rules you're working in. You don't have, you don't have to be expert at it, just know it well enough. 

Lorien: Okay. I have a scenario. I want you to imagine, a hypothetical, I'm gonna paint for you: You've put your heart and soul into this movie, and you are, you've sent it in, the month has gone by. You're on the call with whoever is giving you notes, and you get a note that they say it's an easy lift, but it is so disruptive to the entire screenplay for you, like structure, character, everything. How do you respond in that moment?

Akiva: Well, you always say, I'll try it. You always say, I'll try it. And then you do, and then you discover whether it's true or not true. And if it's true, you say, ‘Hey, this actually really is disruptive. I'm gonna pitch to you. I do this instead.’ 

And sometimes when you try it. You are like, ‘oh, no.’ This is hard earned knowledge. Because for many years my response was, ‘no, are you stupid?’ Which turns out not to be ideal. We have that. ‘Did you read it? Because if I do that, do you see what's,’ yeah. So also don't do that.

Lorien: Yeah. Yeah. We have a Internally for us it's, ‘fuck you.’ Right. And then, ‘oh shit, fuck me.’ And then working through that, does the note work or not? And then, okay, what's next? So, I'm glad it, I'm glad to hear that it is similar. You didn't admit that it's ‘fuck me’ after the ‘fuck you’ internally, but, you know– 

Meg: –and that's Josh Singer, by the way. That's Josh Singer who said that. So just to be fair.

Lorien: But it is nice to know that you are also going through things that are very similar to everyone else. 

Akiva: We all, we're all doing the same job, you know? And also we all do things that don't work. And that's okay too. Like, a career isn't ‘it always works.’ A career is, now and then it worked, and I get to keep doing it.

Meg: That's it.

Akiva: That's it. Whatever level you're at.

Meg: I have a craft question we get a lot that I never know how to answer, so I'm hoping, you know, maybe you don’t know the answer. Which, it's such a simple question. You know, a lot of emerging writers are told to work on their dialogue, and then they come to us and they say, ‘how?’ 

Like, how do I learn how, what great dialogue is? And you know, we can say the kind of easy things like read a lot of scripts, see that dialogue on the page is one, how do you approach dialogue? Well, how did you learn it, I guess? When you went from short story writing to scripts.

Akiva: I think, and I think this is harder in the world as it is today. A lot of it is listening, you know? And part of growing up in New York, you just did that. A, you heard it. Because you lived in a world that was not hermetic the way so many places, or you know, Los Angeles is this sort of like know, you have to know where you're going, where you're going when you get out of your house, right? 

And so there's nothing anecdotal about your life. It's just direct and you know, and you don't run into people and you don't hear people. And, but if you just go into the world, you know where people speak your language, because then there's that sort of like. You're only at home and then somebody takes a trip and then they come home. 

But if you can actually just go into a world where people speak your language, but not the way you do, which is what's great about New York, or the way you do if you're gonna write there, and just listen to how they really talk, not how you imagine they talk. You know, so that's one answer. 

And then the other answer, which is a more complicated one, is there is also a kind of dialogue that is not actually how people talk, and it's wonderful. And you know, often Hemingway was sort of referred to as like writing perfect. Actually nobody talks the way people talk in a Hemingway book. It's just no.

You know, there's this wonderful story that Hills like White Elephants, which is about these two people having lunch and you know, she's pregnant and he, and they never say the words pregnant, you know, and it's wonderful. It's, and it is taught all the time because just the tip of the iceberg is outta the water and everything else is underneath is the writing paradigm.

And great. And it's true. And you know, and certainly in our world, you know, there's only one Aaron Sorkin and, you know, and but Aaron is writing, Aaron's doing poetry. He's doing a walk and talk poem. Over and over again that you can't do anything but just be mesmerized by, and nobody talks like that, so, you know.

So, the answer is try to listen and see what's real. And then, if you're a poet, then the answer is do that, but don't be surprised if you turn out not to be. Because fundamentally that bullseye is really small. And the other one, the one where you just listen, is much more readily available, I think.

Meg: Yeah. So you're also a director and you've directed your own work, and we have writer directors who listen to our show prose and emerging. And we have a question, this may be our producer, Jeff's question. I just love it. Which is, so you talked about as a screenwriter, it's a very normal part of the process to hit self-doubt. ‘Oh my God, none of this works.’ And to be unconfident, and that is part of the process you must go through. 

So you're a director on set, and now you have to project confidence. You are the center of that and your confidence is leading a whole team. Just curious about that difference, about, first of all, direct, you know, directing your own writing. Is that, how is that for you? And how do you stay the confident center? Is there any self doubt that's creeping in now as a director? Do you still go through that?

Akiva: Well, so I am strictly a mediocre director. I'm pretty good at television. No, and I tell you, and this is true and the reason is I'm a really good producer. And what happens is in the pressurized arena of directing, you go to the thing you know the best and are most comfortable with on set. So, when I'm there, and what I should be doing is going,’ oh God, let's just really do that take again.’ I'm thinking, I can make my day, I can get, okay, look at it. Right? And that's the wrong part of my brain.

So I'm a better director of my own episodes of television where there's a whole structure around me and I'm not in my head producing it. Just to be clear about that. So, having said that, both directing and producing, you know, and when I'm talking about like, you know, in producing, not like sitting at home producing, require the confidence of honesty.

You know, it's very akin to – Will Smith always said, “My dad's got a barn. Let's put on a show.” And it is, it's like, getting a group of people at summer camp to do a thing, or parenting, which is, you're not supposed to know all the answers. You're just supposed to be good at knowing enough of them, and asking what you don't know.

I mean, my favorite thing was at some point I was directing and somebody came up to me and said, ‘what did you mean by that?’ And I literally went without thinking about, ‘fuck, I have no idea.’ I was like, ‘it was morning, I was typing, it seemed, and they were,’ and then we started talking about what it might mean and but it was delightful.

And that's the confidence you need when directing or producing. We, because it's a social process unlike writing. Where part of what we're doing is helping people cohere, right? We're helping people, we're galvanizing this oxymoronic notion of collaborative art. It's why Lorien and you said, ‘Oh, I want my writing partner back. I don't like writing alone.’ 

There's a piece of the process that some of us prefer. I love collaborative writing, but not as much as I like writing alone, personally. But you know. But, I love the collaborative component of directing and producing. For me, that is entirely what you do, which is you get people to share an idea of a thing, and then everybody's just pulling for it. 

So if you're just not full of shit and kind it goes a long way.

Lorien: I mean, I think that's it, right? If you're not full of shit and kind. That's it.

Akiva: It's kind of a lot of it. I mean there are skills involved, but fundamentally, you'd be stunned what those two things can get you.

Lorien: Yes.

Meg: Alright. We always ask our guests the same two craft questions and then we end with three questions about you. So we're gonna move into that section of our interview. 

The first question about craft that we ask all of our guests is another thing that we think is important, that we get asked ourselves a lot, which is character introductions. How do you approach character introductions?

Akiva: So, when I am working on a script myself, or when I'm working with another writer and I'm producing a script, I always have a litmus test. What do you want them to feel in this moment? Not, what do you want them to think? Not what do you want them to, what do you want 'em to feel? Because that's the delivery system within which the rest of the content is gonna be carried.

So there are certain places where your emotional real estate is larger, right? Your, the impact is greater. Because the weird truth about screenplay, I think this is true of a lot of narrative objects, but really screenplay is, you're creating a set of questions and then answering them. And some of those questions are simply aPriori and they come with the audience walking in or the reader, and those questions often are, who's this about? Who's this story about? 

And so when you meet a character, it's the first answer to that question, right? There are very few questions you can be sure they're bringing in, right? A lot of them you have to generate over the course of the object, right? When you're the first actor, but this one, you know, they're gonna want to know who's this about?

I mean, I saw Brad Pitt on the poster, or I'm opening the first page. Who's this about? So that's a very powerful moment. When you bring your character in, you don't, they have no idea what to expect, what not to expect. And so what you do with that reveals not just character, but you, as the writer, as the script, as the author, as the narrative voice.

And I would say to you that it is very similar to, back before there was the internet, going on a date. Like, what do you see there, and how do you feel about it in that first moment? Who is he? Who is she? What are they doing? Are they beguiling? Is it interesting? Are they sexy? Are they funny? Are they paying attention? Are they not? All those same questions come up in that scene. So I think they're a fun opportunity for direct, misdirect, or sort of slightly askew introductions.

Lorien: I love that way of looking at that as if the audience is on a date, because you're asking yourself too, do I trust this person? Do I wanna keep seeing this person? Do I wanna follow the like, what are you doing tomorrow? Like, it's all those things you do ask when you're on a date. Back in the olden days. 

Akiva: Back in the old days, before you actually apparently had all that information before you met them.

Lorien: Exactly.

Akiva: And then discovered, well, I guess you could say this aligns and this aligns and–

Lorien: –and you're safe because you're sitting in a movie theater and they're up on a screen, so nothing bad's gonna happen.

Akiva: But by the way, or you're not, and sometimes that's great. Which is, you know–

Lorien: –or something bad is gonna happen, and then you feel unsettled. 

Akiva: When I watched Alien the first time, I literally jumped into the lap of the M’mannix, who I did not know.

Lorien: I did that during Misery. So yeah, I jumped behind me into this woman's lap and she held onto me.

Akiva: By the way, the guy hosted in downtown New York. And I was like, ‘ah!’ And he was like, ‘it's okay.’ Like literally I was like, when my mother was like ‘tell me what's happening.’

Lorien: I love that.

Akiva: But they're not always safe, but that's okay too.

Lorien: Okay. All right. So, our next question is what do you do when you get stuck? And what does being stuck? What does that mean for you?

Akiva: I don't believe that. I don't believe in getting stuck. I don't believe in writer's block. Nobody says to a brick clear. What do you do when you get stuck? They're like, what? I lay more bricks like, you know what, just keep writing. It doesn't, you, nobody, it doesn't have to be good. It just has to be written.

Lorien: Yeah, I think that's it.

Meg: That's our next T-shirt. ‘It doesn't have to be good. It just has to be written.’

Lorien: Yeah. 

Meg: Okay everybody. Sorry. 

Lorien: Okay. And then we have three questions that we ask every guest, and the first one is, what brings you the most joy when it comes to your writing?

Akiva: What a great question. I love having written. The writing? Less, less fun.

Lorien: You won't be shocked to hear that is, word for word, the most common answer to this question.

Meg: Yes. Okay, so next question. What pisses you off about writing?

Akiva: About writing? Oh my God. That you know. It's not writing per se, it's the way we write. What we do for a living. The idea that we have, I'm 63 years old. I am a father, I'm a widower, I'm a husband, I apparently have dogs. I have done things in my life and I still want the approbation of strangers.  I want them to like it. I want them to think that I matter. 

I mean, that's really tedious. And I have minimized it over time, and I can put it in a little box, but it's still there. That thing that at 17 wanted to see, just wanted a book on his bookshelf with his own name on it, on that spine, like, you know, and I guess if that went away. Maybe we would stop. I mean, I get there are people like Chabon who do it for the sheer pleasure, but again, he's a mutant. And the rest of us are just working some shit out.

Meg: I love that so much.

Lorien: Yeah. Well, I mean, it's what I talked about at the beginning too, right? Like that one little compliment and I was like, ‘oh!’ Like, and I haven't yet felt bad about liking it though, and I refuse to. 

Akiva: Nor should you.

Meg: Yes. All right. Last question. If you could have coffee with your younger self, what advice would you give?

Akiva: It's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay.

Lorien: Could you say that again, just so I can hear it one more time?

Akiva: It's gonna be okay.

Lorien: Thank you. Thank you very much.

Akiva: My pleasure. Thank you guys.

Meg: Thank you so much for being on our show, I could do another hour of just being in your–

Akiva: –well, we can do it again.

Lorien: Thanks so much to Akiva for joining us today. And for more support, check out our Facebook group, or you can check out our membership site, The Screenwriting Life workshops where we connect twice a month with our audience with Zooms, and we do story workshops, and Q and A’s.

Meg: And remember, you are not alone and keep writing.