Some story structures, like the story circle used in Rick and Morty, provide an invaluable cheat sheet to get the writing work done.

“Rick and Morty works on the story Circle which is Dan Harmon's thing and that's it's an awesome cheat sheet I mean that's the only way that show goes and it's been fun in my career just to keep changing it up in different ways”

A writer should determine the beginning and ending of a screenplay before drafting the middle.

“you should have know the beginning know the ending and know generally where you want to be in the middle but you want you always kind of want to know where you want to end up and you want three act breaks that's just you know basic [ __ ]”

The rigid screenwriting structures popularized by Sid Field have been adopted by studios to produce formulaic and predictable story arcs.

“there was this book by Sid Field which was a screenwriting book um that you know at one hand it gave a kind of formula on what a movie should be. you know, by page seven, your inciting event should happen, and by page 30, the first, you know, he had everything mapped out by page. And that eventually”

Breaking away from traditional screenwriting structures can be a necessary and wonderful exploration when telling an unconventional story.

“I really had to free myself from the idea of that traditional screenwriting form and just say Let me let me push let me experiment let me try to see is there a way to do this without the Standard Act One break standard you know antagonist is there a way to do it and and that exploration is is it was”

Creative writing benefits from avoiding perfectionism and embracing the collaborative process of iteration.

“often times people are afraid to put out to show people what it is that they're working on at early stages because they want to perfect it not realizing that there is no Perfection”

A show's writers room functions best as a group effort where different contributors provide perspectives that gel into the show.

“the more people that you have in the room that are really contributing the better the show becomes because I think around that season four season five season six we had to really we were in sync everyone was in sync and and different people were providing different sort of perspectives that were all”

He claims that writing semi-autobiographical material is never as effective as writing stories that are kept at a distance.

“I've written or tried to write a couple things that were semi-autobiographical they're Never As Good As the things that are at arms length away”

Screenwriting benefits from using personal experiences and human desires as they appear in the writer's life.

“In pain and glory for example that I ask myself I'm ready really to write about this and not only that I'm ready to talk with the journalist about this thing that is so personal because sometimes when the character demands something from you I mean you have to take in to your guts and take something”