Success Stories

The world has changed a lot over the past year, but one thing that hasn’t changed is the amazing work happening at Stage 32! Our writing community has had some incredible successes this year, and we’re thrilled to be a part of them. All of the wonderful work that you - our writing community - have done this year deserves to be celebrated, and we plan to do just that. Our lookbooks and contests have grown so much during 2021, and we’d be remiss if we didn’t highlight as many success stories as...

  In July of 2018, almost a year after my third and final brain surgery, I sat alone at my desk to start my memoir. I was excited to begin the process. I had a riveting story to tell, and no one was going to stop me. I planned to get up early every morning and write continuously for two hours. I had to be up each day before the sun, my tea hot, and fingers well lubricated between the joints. For weeks I kept this nonstop pace, some days writing for five-hour stretches, until one day, I ju...

NETFLIX AND STAGE 32 INTRODUCE A NEW INITIATIVE TO HELP ASPIRING SERIES AND FILMMAKERS CREATE ENTERTAINMENT FOR THE GLOBAL MARKETPLACE Earlier this year, our two organizations teamed up for a workshop on Television Pitching that was attended by 100,000 aspiring creators in over 160 countries. We knew it would be a natural fit, but it was amazing to see the global impact of the workshop. That’s why we’ve decided to once again partner on the Creating Content for the Global Mark...

I wrote my first book at the age of nine, a pastiche inspired by Ben and Me, a favorite book about Ben Franklin and his sentient mouse companion. I can still recall the joy I had in simply putting words to paper, words that would conjure images in my mind as I wrote them. And that is the way I continue to write today, as if the story were a movie in my head, scenes rewound and replayed as I re-read and tweak them. I once read somewhere that not everyone visualizes what they read, that for some p...

As writers, we sometimes tell ourselves that we will, “get back to writing later “, or “there will be plenty of time to write later". My later lasted twenty-seven years. I love reading and writing, and during my teenage years and into my early twenties, I spent many a day doing both. I wrote short stories about superheroes, medieval duels, animals with telepathy, and treasure hunts in my own neighborhood. My need to write burns like a fire that can’t be extinguished, but it was. Responsibilit...

Several years ago, I noticed how my older children and their friends seemed to have little interest in marriage compared to previous generations. Seeing news of marriage and birth rates dropping, and having endured the ups and downs in my own marriage, I began formulating a world which would turn into my drama pilot SPLIT DECISIONS. With feedback from fellow writers about the strong premise of the script, I entered it into a few competitions, including an entry in the final hours of Stage 32’...

Hello Team 32! First and foremost, THANK YOU to Stage 32, their dedicated staff, and all the producers, managers, and agents for taking time out of your busy schedules to help guide and shepherd me on my long journey as a writer. Your help, insight, and knowledge have been invaluable in my career. Stage 32 has provided me with a direct avenue and channel to get my work out there and read by the top producers, managers, and agents in LA and NYC. I have garnered incomparable knowledge and form...

Happy Motivation Monday Stage 32! I hope you are having a beautiful and creative week so far. As many of you know, in the past 10 years we have had some pretty epic Stage 32 success stories. From Ireland-based screenwriter Ronika Merl optioning her first script to Pennsylvania-based screenwriter Joseph Downey taking his feature Chick Fight (which went on to star Malin Akerman, Bella Thorne, and Alec Baldwin) from pitch to post through Stage 32, we have celebrated some amazing wins within our...

Audiences could all use a good laugh right about now! That is why some of the most popular films this year have been comedies, including Kevin Hart’s FATHERHOOD which hit #1 in over 80 countries on Netflix and FREE GUY which premiered at #1 in the US Box Office. Producers, film financiers, agents, and managers are looking for fresh, unique, and inventive Feature Comedy. As audiences begin to return to movie theaters, everyone is hoping for the same thing: to leave feeling uplifted and with a...

I just finished writing my memoir, The Unfinished Heart. It started life two years ago as a film script called BlackBird, which is currently being made (production is set to start in May next year). The script took me 24 hours to write, and 12 to edit, it has 116 pages and around 17k words. There’s a blog post - Ireland-Based Screenwriter Options her First Script through Stage 32 - about how that all went and came to be. Since this success story, that I would not have had without Stage 32,...