P.D. Days for Scribes: The 2010 Toronto Screenwriting Conference

WHEN I WAS but a wee snapper in grade school, I remember vividly being of two minds about what they called "P.D. Days."  P.D. stood for "Professional Development." Teachers would huddle in conference rooms (I suppose, I was never really sure) and we'd get an extra day off for fun and frolic.  There were a lot of P.D. days in the winter, it seemed, and they all involved tobogganing and snow down your snowpants.  I'm kidding. I was too cool for snowpants.  Not too cool for pneumonia, though.

 Sometimes I'd imagine the teachers and what they were doing.  At first I pictured them with a whole different set of kids -- rough kids, like crash test dummy kids, and their job was to learn'em. They'd learn to appreciate us more.  Then I got a little older and I just figured they went skiing or something.  Man, I hope they didn't have to play that trust exercise where they close their eyes and fall back and expect people to catch them. That one always creeped me out.

Professional development is important in any job.  You always want to be learning new and better ways to do what you do, to unlock unrealized potential, or shake off old patterns that might prevent you from stretching yourself, and doing better.

When I got older I'd hear talk of my corporate friends going to retreats at places like Deerhurst Inn where they hit each other with pillows and did the falling back thing.  It all seemed rather odd and exotic. And a little bit gay.

I don't mean that as a pejorative. I really mean "gay." If our culture has taught me anything, it's that adult pillow fights inevitably lead to same sex hookups. Not that there's anything wrong with that. That's what she said.

Alright. The point is, for writers, professional development is much like the profession itself -- solitary, and haphazard.  You're always looking for inspiration, and most of what training you get is from soaking up the world around you, and occasionally reading books.

Add to this: most writers are self-taught.  I don't mean that they don't take a course now and then, but the only way you really ever get good at writing is to be bad at writing, by yourself, for years, getting slowly better until you're not bad anymore and then you show selected people what you've done, and hopefully build from there.

What's interesting with that is that there are probably as many systems or tricks or tips or processes for being a writer as there are writers. And we rarely, if ever, get to peel back the curtain and see how someone else gets it done.  Maybe a stray quote in an article might hint at something, but you can't really follow up, ask for clarification, or just look the person in the eye and say, "Really? Ginger Ale, Oprah, and Animal Crackers?"

It's in this spirit that my agent, Glenn Cockburn, organized his first Toronto Screenwriting Conference, happening this weekend, Saturday, April 10 and Sunday, April 11th.

"I am so excited to be a part of this event," says Cockburn. "I have found over the years there exists a large gap in the entertainment education and event market for experienced writers to continue to master their craft.  In starting the Toronto Screenwriting Conference the idea was to create a new annual event where experienced writers could come and share their expertise with working writers and the people who work with them like producers, directors, and network executives."



 I got excited about this conference the moment Glenn started sketching it out, because like a lot of writers, I'd been burned before going to events looking for insight.  Things like the panels at the Paley Center used to be great, but with their popularity came a turn away from actual craft insight, and to more, "what is it like working with so and so."  It became about the care and feeding of the Actors. Cue the screaming fanboys & girls. Cue the nervous writer casing the room looking for the nearest exit.

"I had basically stopped going to and participating in these kind of things, 'cause for the most part the moderators get all James-Lipton and the questions are biographical and surfacey," says Martin Gero, the writer-director of Young People Fucking, currently staffed on HBO's Bored to Death.  "What really excited me about a conference like this is there's gonna be none of that bullshit "What was your childhood like?" stuff.  It's gonna be focused on craft.  How do you break a story? How detailed are your outlines? How do you like to run a room/use other writers?"

Martin is just one of the writers who's going to be doing double duty this weekend, attending the conference as well as moderating a Q&A.  It's going to be working writers, interviewing, discussing, and challenging other writers to peel back the work cocoon & talk process & professional development.  No James Lipton -- just the straight goods.

Cockburn continues:  "We wanted to bring to Toronto writers who are working on the top shows in the world and have them talk about the way they do it, to discuss some of the constructs that they use, the tricks they have been taught and the various ways they approach the problems all writers face in breaking a season, plotting an episode or writing a funny line.   The discussion will not be gossipy war stories, it will be experts sharing their expertise." 

The whole thing gets kicked off Saturday morning with Tim Long from The Simpsons.  I asked my good friend Rob Sheridan (Corner Gas, Little Mosque on the Prairie, 18 to Life,) the moderator of that session, what he hoped to get out of it:  "I'm interested in finding out how this beast of a show, with nearly 500 episodes and countless characters and something like 17 writers in the room, manages to come out from under its own shadow and still find stories to tell. AND make them funny. AND write the commercials. They don't write the commercials? See, right there. I didn't know that. But then I'm not that bright."

Now, add to that Robert. C. Cooper, co-creator & Executive Producer of SGU Stargate Universe, which has rebooted the longrunning, successful Stargate TV franchise for a new audience, Chuck Tatham, co-Executive Producer of "How I Met Your Mother," formerly of "Arrested Development" and my late lamented and loved "Andy Barker, P.I." and Rhett Reese -- the writer of Zombieland.

There's also going to be sessions with writers of some of the most helpful screenwriting books I've come across -- like Sheldon Bull (Elephant Bucks) -- required reading for comedy scribes... Pam Douglas (Writing the TV Drama Series,) Dr. Linda Seger, whose Making a Good Script Great is a well-thumbed paperback on just about every screenwriter's shelf.

"I am personally excited to see Sheldon Bull and Dara Marks," says Cockburn.  "Both of their books are great screenwriting resources."

You can't ask a book a followup question.  I'm already making notes for those two sessions!

I'll be leading a Q&A on Sunday with Rob Zotnowski.  Zotnowski has now hung out his producer shingle with partners Sam Raimi & Josh Donen.  But for more than a decade, he was a Senior Network Exec with CBS -- and in that time he helped guide shows like CSI, Everybody Loves Raymond, The Mentalist, Flashpoint, and The Good Wife to the screen.  Rob's going to be breaking down the journey from pitch to script to screen for those shows and many others, as we explore the myth & the reality of managing your network relationship. There's not a writer I know that couldn't use a bit of P.D. on that score. I'm really looking forward to our conversation.

There will also be sessions on archtypes & character, hybrid and animation writing,  and how to tell your stories more cinematically.

The price point ($369) is priced to break even.  (I went to the CFTPA's Prime Time conference in Ottawa in February, and it cost me three times that much, plus hotel. Ugh.) Everything goes to bringing in the speakers & putting them up. (I have no financial interest in the conference.)  There are an awful lot of Canadians on this list who've gone down, and "made good" -- and are coming back now to share what they've learned.

While we hope anyone who works with screenwriters will come this weekend, we are really hoping to see a large contingent of the working writers," Cockburn says.  "We believe they will learn a few new tricks of their trade that they otherwise wouldn't have  access to."

If you're a working (or let's face it, right now, more commonly not-working) writer, $369 might seem like a lot, but it's less than the cost of one, one-way flight to L.A. -- and you don't even need to rent a car. It's a great deal. And there's not a writer I know that couldn't benefit from at least a few of these sessions.  It fits right in with what I was saying last week -- where you need the edge isn't in getting your first job...it's moving up the chain.

"One thing I always learn whenever I start working on a new show is that I still have a lot to learn," says Sheridan. "Every story room is different -- the exact process that works for one show doesn't necessarily work for another. That said, there are certain fundamentals that apply across the board and it's always interesting to find out what those are. So this is really a chance for writers to get a window on a whole bunch of different worlds at once."

Gero puts it this way: "For the most part, you don't really get a chance to find out how other writers work, unless you have a chance to work with them.  The idea of the conference is to steal some of that knowledge away without going through the trouble of being paid handsomely to work with these guys...wait..."

No trust excercises. No pillows. Just a bunch of witty smartypants writers, getting some P.D.  And no snow down the snowpants.

For more information on the Conference, including times, speakers, location and registration, click here.