I'm gonna talk to you today about my background. I have 20 years of experience working with Academy Award winning writers, and on this episode I'm going to tell you. How I acquired all of that. I'm looking forward to hanging out with you today. I wanted to create a podcast where I could talk to writers and find out what, makes them love story and how did they become writers.
I feel like there's so many podcasts out there with screenwriting tips. Talk to experts and learn this and learn that. And while I have 20 years of experience as a writer in screenwriting. Television writing, playwriting . i, I certainly would love to share all of my screenwriting tips with you and all of that, but I just don't think that's what the world needs.
Another podcast full of experts. So what I really wanted to do was , bring on my friends who are writers who struggle every day, and [00:01:00] try to find the , will to, to get to the desk and write every day, because that's what they have to do. Writing saves lives. I say writers are born all the time, ?
You are not, um, you're not hearing voices and dialogue and characters for nothing. That doesn't happen to everybody. If you're out there and you're something speaking to you that you need to write down, you are a writer. And I, that's who I wanna talk to, other writers who are trying to work their way through and see what works for them, what doesn't,
you know, what's the best thing, the worst thing, and obviously the most craziest thing because this business is crazy. Being a writer is nuts. So I just really wanted to do a podcast where writers talk to other writers about writers. Story and story love. So welcome, welcome to Story Love My Origin story.
A lot of you know, a lot of my friends out there who are listening already know that I am the daughter of Bobby Masco, who is an [00:02:00] Oscar winner for co-writing the movie Crash. And co-producing, million Dollar maybe. He also has created many television shows. He's been the artistic director of a theater workshop at the Actor's Gym for about 30 years.
So, my school, my film school, my theater school was trial trial by fire. Right. I learned by working for him, I was, I was a writer, you know, when I was like 16, I started writing poetry. I started scribbling in a journal. I would write until my fingers bled, right? Typical like girl angst sitting in the bathroom floor of the high school, writing in my journal.
So, um, that, that was me. But I had never thought about. Actually learning how to write or being a writer. In high school, I was, I was learning mollier and that was not me, right? I was a kid growing up in house, kitchen, New York at this time when I was 16. My father was a construction [00:03:00] worker.
I was the daughter of a construction worker. My mother was a computer programmer for the city, for New York City. She worked for the city. And we lived in a little two bedroom apartment on 54th and 11th. I shared a bedroom with my sister and you know, our building had a doorman. We had a doorman and we had elevators.
So we weren't rich but, but we weren't poor. We were what the world knew as lower middle class at that time. The working class. And, um, being New York working class was, well, there was a pride in that and there was a pride in growing up in Hell's Kitchen. And so that was a big part of my identity, being a scrappy Irish Italian girl growing up in Hell's Kitchen.
Um. When I turned 18, my father decided that he wanted to pursue a career in writing. He had been writing plays on the side while he was working construction. He'd come home and write little plays and bring them to his [00:04:00] actor's gym workshop where my sister and I sold cookies at the shows. Right. So, um, so he decided he wanted to move to LA and when he got there, based on a play that he had written, about his life in-house kitchen. He was introduced to Paul Haggis who was writing a television show called Easy Streets, and they met and um, hit it off and he hired my dad as a producer on the show. And from that moment on my father's career took off. He, um, he just continued to work harder than everybody else, which is just the facts.
It's just true him and him and Paul have a similar work ethic. If you're not familiar with Paul Hagas, he's the other co-writer of. Crashed. He and my father also created a television show called The Black Donnelleys. So while I always worked as my father's assistant when we were working together with Paul on projects with him, I would often work alongside Paul as well.
So one day [00:05:00] their writing, they work out the story. They, they story structure first. That's where I learned everything about story structure from working with them. And, um, they had their, you know, assignment for the day. They figured out the story. My dad was gonna go home and write his pages.
Paul would go home and write his, and they had made a deal that they would write five pages each. So we go home and I'm his typist. That was my job. I was his assistant. So we write 10 pages and, uh, and we get to Paul's house the next day and, you know, we knock on the door and Paul says, good morning, how you doing?
And my dad says, good. You know, I, uh, I, I wrote 10 pages last night and Paul says, oh, good. I wrote 12. And that was my first lesson in work ethic as a writer. And, and when you think about this, I was. Young at this time. Right. And I was actually that wasn't the black donnelleys that was a, a show way before that.
'cause I was really young at that point. I was still only about 22. And, uh, these, these little nuggets. Um, when I was [00:06:00] in my younger years, I, I took them for granted, right? But when I look back and I see that, that was what I was taught, that work ethic, that when you have to write five, you write 10, you write as much as you can write, you write until you can't stay up anymore, you just keep writing.
I'm very lucky to have been taught that and there's lots of little gems that I was given in life because of my, the opportunity I had to work for my father right out of college. I never went to film school. I will, I went to, I studied theater. Uh, I went to San Francisco State because when we left Hell's Kitchen and moved to LA, I felt like I had landed on Planet Mars because I had no idea who these people were.
You know, I did not fit in being a little girl from New York. Going to LA I just did not fit in, but I went to San Francisco and I loved it. So I went to college there and in my senior year I get a call and my dad asks if I wanna go be his, his assistant on [00:07:00] a TV show that he just sold. And the answer was absolute fucking wooly.
So I packed my stuff and I love San Francisco, and the rest is history. On bad days. When I go to bed at night, I think, you know that I took the easy way out. I took a job with my father and I'll never know what I would've done with my life if I hadn't done that. Right. Or I think I've never proven myself because I was given it so easily.
And, and those things keep me up at night. I often joke around and say, you know. To all my haters out there, don't worry, I got your back. Because don't worry, nobody's sleeping well at night, right? For the things that, that keep us up, right? But on a good day, on the good days, I look back and I think that I was given a lot of opportunities that I could have squandered.
And instead, with every opportunity I got, I showed up. I worked hard, I paid attention. So that now, almost more than 20 years [00:08:00] later I know of, uh, a whole lot. About a whole lot of things about this business, from theater to television, writing to screenwriting, to directing, to producing. Um, I've just seen it all.
I've, I've been there through the process of countless projects from start to finish, from pre-production to post. And so, I've gotten this amazing education and I've always sort of taken pride with the fact that I did show up and I did do the best that I could with what I was given. And so now. I like to help other people as much as I can because of how much help I was given.
So while nepotism does sit. Heavy on my shoulders. I try to do the best I can with it. So that's my origin story. You know, I left out a bunch of details, but that's the gist of it, right? One of the best feelings about being a writer is, is sharing your work and, and watching the [00:09:00] things that you've written resonate.
With others and things that I've written that I, I didn't even think could have an effect on anybody have, have affected people. You know, I, uh, people have shared that the things that I've written have really, you know, helped them have a perspective on things. And there's no bigger compliment than that for a writer.
You really have to just try to write truthfully, right, and be authentic as a writer. And when you're authentic and share something authentic in yourself, right? This universality, hopefully it reaches people. So for me, that's one of the things I love most about, about being a writer. When I think about who I was at 22, leaving college, getting this job opportunity with my father, and showing up and sitting in these rooms, I remember having this specific moment of realizing that I understood what they were talking about and that.
Story, I [00:10:00] understood it, um, in a way that others weren't catching on as fast, and I thought, oh, I get this. That's cool. And it took me about five years to actually say that out loud. So, so I was an assistant. I would sit in these rooms and in these story sessions, and the writers would throw around these ideas and, and, and I'd, you know, I'd have the idea in my head and someone would, would eventually say what was in my head.
And I think, wow. I was thinking that. I thought that that's, that's, oh wow. I'm, I'm on the same page as these guys. Okay. I get this. And then what started to happen was we'd be in story sessions and I'd be the assistant taking notes, and I'd start to think things that nobody was saying. And then, but I didn't say them out loud, and I started to think, well, nobody's saying what I'm thinking because it just must be so obvious and stupid that nobody's saying it.
Until finally, I, I don't remember when, but I mean, this was after years and years and years and years and, and, you know, [00:11:00] proving myself as being good at the job that I did, do, I finally got the guts to, to speak what, what act, what I actually thought, you know, in a room in front of other people.
I always was able to speak with my father. My father's an amazing mentor. He, um, he's always been willing to hear what my thoughts were about his stories and acknowledging when those thoughts were helpful and, um, and thinking correctly about story, right? You can't just say, I don't like something, right?
That's not a note. I don't like it, it's not a note. It doesn't work for the story is a note, and here's why. Let me tell you why I don't think this works. For the story you're telling is a note. And that's another thing that I learned, that you have to be very disciplined. If you're gonna give a note, you better be saying something that's helpful, not something that's critical.
Another valuable lesson I was taught very early on so I'm in these rooms and um, I'm in these rooms and I'm starting to think things [00:12:00] that nobody's saying and I'm thinking, well, nobody's saying it because it's obvious and it's stupid. Until finally I get the guts that in front of people, other than in my own household, right?
In my own own father's writer's room, I would give a note. And people would acknowledge that, that it was a really good idea that nobody had thought of. And I started to realize that I was having thoughts that other people were not having. And then actually I did have value. And it wasn't until then that I really started trusting myself in terms of screenwriting and television writing.
So, you know, I always wrote plays. Plays are what I gravitated to regardless. When I was in college, before I started working with my dad, I was still writing plays and poetry, as I said. But screenwriting and, and television writing is just a totally different animal. It's two totally different mindsets.
And what I realized that I was starting to understand was the difference between writing and structure. [00:13:00] That is the key element to everything. Understanding the difference between writing and structure is the thing that I wish I would've paid more attention to. Early on, because when you're sitting in a writer's room, certainly in television, certainly in television, right, it's all about story structure.
It's all about the beats. You have to pitch your story to your showrunner before you ever even write it. If you can't pitch a story, if you don't know how to pitch a story, you are in trouble. So I was brought up on story structure, and it really is the thing that helps that helps you complete. A screenplay and write a cathartic, thrilling screenplay because you're separating the story from the writing.
Everybody wants to write dialogue. That's the fun part. So the thing that I talk about at Writing by structure in my Patreon, in my consulting, um, on my online classes, the digital course that I have, it's all about really understanding story structure before you put a pen to the [00:14:00] paper. That's the thing that sets a writer apart.
That's what I learned from the amazing group of people that I was learning from, because as my father would sell these projects and Paul would sell these projects, we'd start working with more and more writers who were in their caliber. And I am just sitting there soaking everything up and seeing how all the pieces fall together.
And the thing that I realized that they all had in common, all of these major players who were making things happen is that they all understood story structure. And when I would leave work and I would go to my writing workshops and hang out with my writer friends, nobody was talking about story structure.
Everybody was just talking about writing and how do we write, and I really want to try to find a way. To make writers understand that the thing that they have to learn is story structures so that they can save themselves a whole bunch of time. Just, you know, skip the 10 years that it took me to figure that out.
I'm gonna tell you, you have to know this. It's hard. It's hard to [00:15:00] accept it because we just want to write, so that's my purpose. That's who I am. I'm gonna bring a new writer in every week we're gonna talk, we're gonna find out the good, the bad, the crazy. We are gonna talk story. If any of you, um, listeners have a story problem that you wanna work through, you can contact me at at my email.
I'll put it in the, in the. Um, podcast notes. Um, let me know that you wanna come on the podcast and talk, talk a story over with me. I'd be happy to do that. That's part of story love. Um, and, and that's it. I really hope that you get something out of these episodes in, in understanding that we're all in the same boat as writers, right?
We're all lost, we're all trying to find our way. , We're all trying to figure out story structure. Together. And, and that's what Story Love is all about. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today at Story Love.
