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Amy Suto
Hello! 👋 I’m Amy Suto, a published author and freelance memoir ghostwriter. Subscribe to my newsletter & writing job board here!
Stress Relief for Writers: Staying Creative with Busy Schedules
In the past, I've written about how to balance writing while being a showrunners' assistant or writers' assistant, but today I'd like to tackle general strategies for stress relief so that you can maintain your creativity in any period of your life -- during the holidays, in times of financial stress, or while anxiously waiting the return of FX's LEGION.
How to Work with a Writing Partner (and not murder each other!)
So if you're starting in a television writers' room or are about to embark on writing a script with a writing partner, here are some things you should keep in mind so that you get along with other creatives and homicide stays on the page:
Good Books: Being Gritty, Successful, and Working Smart for Screenwriters
As writers, the only part of our career we can truly control is our output. How productive can we be? How can we write more pages in a day? How can we optimize our creativity and enrich our storytelling?That's why as part of my Good Books series, I'm exploring how we can work smarter -- without adding six more cups of coffee to our day.
3 Tips for Getting Organized and Motivated after a Setback (Writing in Hollywood)
We can't control a lot of aspects of writing in television, but what we can control is our own mindset and how we approach our work. By investing in a sense of humor, a positive perspective, and some organizational habits, we can re-route ourselves and get back on track no matter the setback. So, here are six ways I reset myself and my goals after a setback:
Writers' Assistant, Showrunner's Assistant, and Writers' PA (What These Jobs Are and How to Get Them)
Learn the difference between writers' assistant, showrunner's assistant, and writers' PA -- as well as how to get these jobs in a television writers' room.
Writing the Half-Hour TV Drama
I hate the phrase "dramedy."Every half-hour TV show that isn't quite a comedy has been given that title. NURSE JACKIE? WEEDS? TRANSPARENT? GIRLS? Dramedies, despite the fact that the spine of these shows are unequivocally dramatic.
Writing Through Fear
It's been a year since I graduated from the USC screenwriting program, and in that year I've learned a number of lessons: there are a number of dinner recipes out there that don't include pasta, perfection is not attainable, decaf coffee is a cruel joke. The most important lesson of all, however, is how to write through fear.
How To Get Your Life Together as a Graduating Writer (A 5-Step Guide With Photos)
The other day I was lucky enough to return to USC and speak on a panel at the film school about how to survive senior exit programs like First Pitch and the realities of the post-grad world.As someone who is just a year out of school and have found employment in the industry as still making time to write while at my agency job, I'm qualified to Pretend to Know What I'm Doing (TM).
How to Network Authentically in Hollywood
If I had to pinpoint what my catchphrase is this time in my career, it would probably be along the lines of "let's get drinks!" I've been enjoying meeting new people at various companies around Hollywood, and it's been the highlight of my time working at an agency -- and I didn't always see it as such.
Assistant Life: Surviving Vs. Thriving, Strategies to Keep Writing
I've been writing a lot recently about creatives in the industry and posting images of aesthetically pleasing and meticulously organized writing spaces (aka: my therapy) so this blog post is continuing the trend.At holiday parties this past month, I've been meeting other writers who are holding down jobs in the industry, from showrunner's assistants to writer's PA's to researchers.
L.A. Creatives: Jorge Molina (Writer and Showrunner’s Assistant, HEATHERS)
L.A. Creatives is my new blog series highlighting young creatives in the trenches of this city, as we all strive to practice our art form and sustain a living. This interview features Jorge Molina, (@colormejorge) who is a writer I knew at USC and now the showrunner's assistant on HEATHERS at TV Land.
A Day in the Life of a Hollywood Agency Assistant
As an assistant at an agency, you're fighting two battles: not only are you constantly putting out fires and helping clients and managing their schedules and your bosses' schedule and working 11+ hour days to solve problems for writers and directors, but then you have to some how find a way to carve out time to do the job you WANT.
Writer's Life: Finding Creativity & Maslow's Hierarchy
I work Hollywood hours. Up at 5am or 6am to write (depending on the project I'm working on), out the door by 8am, at my agency by 8:30am, and back home by 8pm if I'm lucky (if I have networking drinks, make that 10pm.)
How to Survive Working as a Hollywood Agency Assistant (Part I: Why the Agency Route?)
To be honest, when I started as an agency assistant, life was hard. In my second week, I remember staying until 10pm eating ramen alone at my desk wondering what the hell I had gotten myself into. I broke up with my boyfriend at the time because he didn't understand why I would *want* to spend 11+ hours at a desk answering a phone and sending a million of emails.
Working in Hollywood and the Cost of Ambition
In a whirlwind two months, I graduated from USC with a degree in screenwriting, won some shiny things from USC and from the Television Academy for the series I wrote and created, started full-time as an assistant to an awesome TV lit agent at Verve, and made some incredible new friends.
Inside the USC Writing for Screen and Television BFA Program
Because I'm graduating soon, it's about time that the nostalgia hit full force. Tonight is my last USC class, ever, and it's all beginning to sink in.I've been doing a few panels for admitted screenwriters and have been answering a lot of questions about the program, so I thought I'd write about what it's been like going to school here for the Writing for Screen and Television program.
A Week in the Life: Showrunning, Writing, and Sleeping (Sometimes?)
Since January, I've been inhaling coffee and painting my calendar red, as this semester has been the most insane yet: by May, I will have written 210 screenplay pages, produced over 120 minutes of the dramatic scripted TV miniseries CON, and will have met several career milestones, such as getting my first feature assignment, being nominated for a college television Emmy, and graduating from USC's Writing for Screen and Television program (also known as the Writing on Zero Hours of Sleep program) and to top it all off still maintain some semblance of a social life.
3 Steps to Successful Worldbuilding (How to Prewrite)
It's an absolute crime how pre-writing is so overlooked in the writing world. Have you read Stephen King's On Writing? That was one of my favorite writing books as a kid and I took his advice as gospel. One of the tenets of his book was that too much outlining and prewriting killed the story, which made me instantly afraid of killing my story before I could discover it through the actual process of writing.
5 Tips for Using Flashforwards in TV Writing
Flashforwards are the flashbacks of our era of TV writing. From the flashforwards in Lost that showed our merry ensemble cast finally off the island at last (and wanting to go back) to shows like Damages and Bloodline that structure entire seasons on the content of their jumps in time, this tool has become ubiquitous in our modern age of storytelling as a linear narrative faces more challenges in capturing an audience.
Trailers and Time Management
The past 8 months have been filled with the creation of this television miniseries, which is airing September 10th on Trojan Vision 8.1. The series will also be available online at ConTVShow.com. If you want to know more about the series, you can read interviews on that website so I don't sound like a broken record every time I blog about this series. Anyways, I'm incredibly proud of how the trailer came out, and can't wait to share the series! It was a challenge to get the show made and on the air, and every hurdle was worth it.
Writing 100 Pages and Second Seasons, #Scriptchat, & Passing the FBI Fitness Test
It's been a landmark summer filled with unexpected writing opportunities, a rollercoaster post-production process for CON, and lots of having to explain why my walls are covered in newspaper clippings, red string, and far too many color-coded notecards.
![INTJ: One of The Rarest, Loneliest Personality Types [Introverts and Writing]](/imgs/sq/c87fa8f1-bigstock-paper-cut-of-children-play-on-48270044.webp?format=750w)
INTJ: One of The Rarest, Loneliest Personality Types [Introverts and Writing]
I hadn't put much stock in personality types up until now, but when I started reading more about INTJs, I began to realize that the kind of isolation I sometimes felt (and felt unable to express) even when surrounded by people I cared about had roots in my personality type.
Playing Pretend: On Set of CON and the Television Experience
Every week we have a quote of the day on our call sheet. My favorite was written by Irina, our Russian supervising producer: “We wrap by 5pm or else I’m sending you all to Siberia.”
Antidote 15: Web Festivals, TV Interviews, & More
The past seven days have been a whirlwind of press and exciting events to celebrate Antidote 15's season two and all the amazing people who are the lifeblood of the show. On Friday, Antidote 15 screened in the Charlie Chaplin theater at Raleigh Studios, and I was able to talk on a panel about the inspiration for the show, and why ex-boyfriends, deadlines, and drinking things you're not supposed to be are common college struggles.
CON: Writing Con Artists
So ever since the TV miniseries my writing partner Jen Enfield-Kane and I created went into production, I've been living that executive producer life again. Which sounds glamorous, but in reality it's more paperwork, scheduling, emailing, and budgeting than I ever thought I'd do in a lifetime.
Antidote 15 is Going to the Hollyweb Web Festival!
Antidote 15 started in January 2014 as a fun experiment to see whether or not I could do something waaaay outside my comfort zone, which was to independently produce a web series I had written. Up until that point, I had mostly just been studying the craft of screenwriting, with a small number of short films done for classes and for fun.
Creating Detailed Character Backstory
I'm working on some new characters for a feature I'm writing this fall, and am reminded that character backstory is like trying to get to know a person and they keep ignoring you, so you have to make up things about them until they tell you the truth.
Writing The Vision
I've been writing short films, short stories, and summaries inside and outside of the classroom of this idea since December of 2013, and I'm excited to finally use the power of deadlines and inordinate amounts of coffee to bring it to fruition. So partially in order to procrastinate from the writing I'm doing today and to hold myself accountable, here's an update on The Vision.
On the Importance of Adventures for Writers
In the past seven days, I've shot a balloon with an arrow at the Pasadena archery range, practiced cha-cha one night and learned break on two salsa another, put on boxing gloves and sparred with my self-defense partner as we learned headlocks and groundwork, learned the basics of Python and how to hack a computer to redirect to Bing everytime you type in "Google" (nefarious, I know), and am going to a concert on Friday in Hollywood and the Getty on Saturday for live music.
Web Series as Practice for the Real World
Today after the 10am staff meeting for Orientation I hibernated in my apartment and attempted to catch up on sleep, but then quickly realized that wasn't going to happen and I was better off catching up on work.For the past few months I've been in pre-production for season two of my web series, Antidote 15, which has (happily) been my life since December 2013.
Hello! 👋 I’m Amy Suto. I’m a bestselling author, creator of the bestselling Substack Make Writing Your Job, and a 7-figure freelance memoir ghostwriter. Subscribe to my newsletter and writing job board to learn how to make writing your job!
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