Screenwriting starts here. 

When literary manager Trent Anderson reads a screenplay for Final Draft's Big Break Screenwriting Contest, he’s not just looking for a polished script. He’s looking for a writer with a distinct voice. 

As Head of Literary at Luber Roklin Entertainment, he reads tons of material every day from both aspiring and professional writers. The scripts that always stand out are the ones that feel deeply personal and unique to the writers behind them.

Finding His Passion 

Anderson’s path into the film industry wasn’t exactly traditional. “I was trading commodities,” he says. “Just the most boring thing ever.”

But when a mentor from his high school arts program pointed out how passionate Anderson was when he talked about movies and storytelling, he had a lightbulb moment. Maybe he should think about becoming a film producer, even though he admits he didn’t fully understand what producers actually did at the time.

“I liked the idea of putting people together,” he says.

While still in college, he began interning at production companies, eventually receiving advice that would shape his career: Start in talent representation.

Instead of the traditional agency mailroom route, Anderson joined boutique manager Joanne Horowitz, where the small size of the company meant he was quickly exposed to every side of the business. From there, Anderson moved to Anonymous Content, first working with actors before transitioning to the literary side of the business. “I wanted to be on the lit side with the people who were creating all these opportunities,” he says.

He eventually began representing writers and directors and producing projects that grew out of client relationships. “Every producing opportunity I’ve had has come from clients and developing material with them from the ground up,” Anderson says, which is exactly what he loves doing now at Luber Roklin. 

The Most Important Thing He Looks for in a Big Break Script

When Anderson evaluates scripts for Big Break, he asks the same question when deciding whether to represent a writer: Does the writer have a distinctive voice?

While that question can sound a bit vague, Anderson clarifies it this way.

“I’m always looking for something that feels like the person who’s writing it is the only person who could have written it. If it feels like it could be written by anyone, then that’s not really interesting to me,” he says.

The Mistake Many Writers Make

After reading scripts from emerging writers across competitions, representation submissions, and professional channels, Anderson sees one mistake repeatedly: Too many writers chase trends.

“I think people often try to chase what’s working right now. If a show like The Bear becomes popular, scripts that are similar start popping up.”

He says that approach misses the point of why those projects succeed. “The reason that show stood out is because it didn’t feel like anything we were seeing,” Anderson says.

Even more importantly, the development timeline for film and television means trend-chasing rarely works. “These things take so long that by the time anything is going to get made, the trend you’re chasing has already moved on.”

That doesn’t mean writers should ignore the marketplace entirely. Anderson still reads material with an eye toward what could realistically sell.

“Good writing will always stand out,” he says. “But good writing that also feels like there’s a market for it is really the thing that lands with me.”

Advice for Writers Entering Big Break

For writers submitting to Big Break or any major competition, Anderson encourages them to focus less on what they think the industry wants and more on the stories they genuinely want to tell. He points to advice often shared by Jordan Peele.

“When he’s writing a script, he always says he’s trying to write his favorite movie,” Anderson says. “What’s the thing that you’re not seeing out there that, if you could, you’d go see in theaters this weekend?” 

That’s the script writers should be trying to write.

Thinking Like a Producer

Anderson also encourages writers to think about the practical side of the business, something many emerging screenwriters overlook: At some point, someone will have to try to sell the script.

“A lot of times writers say, ‘I’m going to write this thing I love, and you should just go out and sell it,’” he says.

But selling a project requires a salesman in the form of a manager, agent, or producer, who must pitch it to buyers, follow up, and convince people to take a chance on it.

“Someone has to go make the phone call,” Anderson says. “They have to ask someone to read it. They have to pitch it for you.”

That means writers should think strategically about the kind of project they’re creating. “You want to give them the tools and set them up for success so that you’re making their job as easy as possible.”

Standing Out in a Crowded Field

The reality, Anderson says, is that breaking into screenwriting has never been more difficult. “There’s more competition than ever. There are more people trying to do this than ever,” he says.

That’s one reason competitions like Big Break remain so valuable.

They can help unknown writers with powerful voices, the kind of writers Anderson and other industry professionals are always looking for, get noticed.

 

Final Draft’s 2026 Big Break Screenwriting Contest is now open for entries. For more information visit finaldraft.com/big-break-screenwriting-contest.

Based in beautiful Bend, Oregon, Erin Galey is a writer-director who won the Sci-Fi/Fantasy category in the 2025 Final Draft Big Break competition with her feature See You See Me. The script is a grounded genre thriller that blends a search for identity with cutting-edge science as one woman fights for her own survival. What begins as a mystery about fractured memory evolves into something much darker and more existential.

“It’s a sci-fi thriller. A young woman wakes up from a coma, and she’s trying to get her memory back. She really wants to go home and be reunited with her family, because she’s been asleep for two years in a coma. Or so she thinks,” says Galey with an impish smile. 

As the story unfolds, the character discovers she is actually a clone, created by grieving parents to replace their daughter. But that’s just the first of many twists and turns in the script. “It’s all told from the point of view of the clone. It’s a story about belonging, identity and who you really are, and what all that really means,” she says. 

It’s a bold concept, but Galey’s Big Break win wasn’t just about writing something clever or shocking. It marks the next step in moving her career forward.

From Encouragement to Recognition

By the time Big Break came along, Galey had already begun building momentum with the project. She had attended BendFilm’s Basecamp, which she describes as a meaningful early boost, and then got into Stowe Story Labs. Those opportunities helped give her the green light to keep putting her work out into the world.

“That gave me the courage and validation to apply for more things,” she says. Then came the rollercoaster climb through the Big Break competition. 

“I made a quarterfinalist, then a semifinalist, and then a top 10 finalist,” Galey says. “It just kept going, I couldn’t believe it.”

When she finally learned she had won, the moment was emotional.

“They told me I was the winner, and I was just so floored and thrilled,”

Like many entrants, Galey knew the competition came with prizes and industry exposure, but she didn’t fully understand how much support would follow until after the win. That turned out to be one of the biggest benefits.

“I knew there was a prize package, but I hadn’t deeply researched it,” she says. “And it’s been an amazing experience.”

The “Professional Amateur”

As one of the winners, Big Break has given her access to working professionals, craft development, and career strategy at a moment when she was ready to make the leap to professional filmmaker.

She points to her work with career coach Lee Jessup as one of the most valuable parts of the experience.

“She’s so brilliant and has really helped me understand certain aspects of how to go about becoming a working screenwriter from what I call myself, a ‘professional amateur.’ Trying to make that leap from doing this as a passion to doing it as a job - Lee’s filling that gap for many people,” she says.

She also cites screenwriting mentor Jen Grisanti’s class as another major asset. 

“You can pitch in her classes, and that has been incredible,” Galey says. “Being able to pitch, listen to other people’s pitches, hear the feedback on their pitches, see things that work, see things that maybe could use another look.”

Pitching to Pros

One unforgettable opportunity that came from the experience was the chance to pitch to Oscar-nominated screenwriter Vanessa Taylor, co-writer of The Shape of Water. For Galey, it was both intimidating and helpful.

“I was nervous to pitch to her, but then as soon as I saw her on screen, I was like, ‘Oh, she’s down to Earth, I can just do my pitch.’”

What Galey valued most was Taylor’s clarity. Instead of vague encouragement, she offered precise, practical feedback.

“She actually really loved my concept,” Galey says. “And then she had two really great notes. They’re not major changes, but they were enough that I was like, ‘Oh, wow, that really elevates this to a level I hadn’t considered.’” 

One of those notes spoke directly to the sophisticated demands of sci-fi writing, and constructing creative reveals for certain plot points. “She said, ‘the sci-fi audiences are going to poke holes in all your stuff, and you have to be ready for that’” Galey says.

It’s the kind of high-level, professional note that can strengthen both the logic of a screenplay and the arc of a protagonist. Something you can’t learn in a class or a book. 

The Strategic Path Forward

For Galey, Big Break has helped her clarify how she wants to move forward career-wise.

“Working with Lee and Jen is about how you’re going to shape your career moving forward,” she says. “It pushed me over the edge to make some decisions, create action steps, and formulate a plan moving forward that is strategically accurate with industry-vetted advice/next steps, not just hoping my own perseverance will work.”

In other words, she feels momentum. 

Her Advice to Writers Entering Big Break

Galey’s advice to writers considering the competition is straightforward.

“I would just do it,” she says. “This is a contest where you have a lot of exposure to real working industry people, so make sure your script is in good shape.”

Her own script, she says, had gone through extensive rewrites before she sent it in. “I polished the rock a lot before I put it out there.”

Then she offers a unique perspective, perhaps shaped by her life in the Pacific Northwest. 

“This competition happens every year,” she says. “It’s like a river you can jump on at any moment, so think about being ready to get on that river before you go down”

Congratulations Erin! We can’t wait to see what happens next.

Learn more about the Big Break Screenwriting Contest.

Many screenwriters focus on the feature film screenplay as the primary format they need to master: three-act structure, the Hero’s Journey, the inciting incident, turning points, and other core elements of screenwriting. The idea is simple: if you can grasp these fundamentals and sustain 90 to 110 pages of compelling narrative momentum, you’re set as a screenwriter.

While this skill set is important, writing exclusively in one format can limit how your storytelling abilities develop. You may become efficient within a familiar structure, but also more rigid and less adaptable. Exploring multiple storytelling formats can sharpen your craft, strengthen creative discipline, and open up more career opportunities, if you approach it strategically.

Different mediums stress different structural instincts, and will expose blind spots in your writing. Diversifying formats doesn’t dilute your voice. It reveals where your craft is over-reliant on one storytelling habit, and can lead to you growing as a screenwriter and writer overall.

Television: Designing Engines, Not Just Arcs

Feature screenwriting trains you to build towards a single climax. Television writing asks something more complex: can this premise generate conflict repeatedly and without exhausting itself? 

Writing a teleplay forces you to think in engines rather than endings. A pilot is not just a beginning: it’s a durability test. Characters must produce story over time. The world must sustain tension beyond one climax. Stakes must renew and regenerate rather than conclude.

Mike White is a great example of a screenwriter who flourished because of his ability to bounce between feature and television writing. He wrote the films Chuck & Buck and The Good Girl — both sharp, contained character studies — as well as commercial comedies like School of Rock. But his voice expanded in episodic form with Enlightened and later The White Lotus. The series format allowed him to sustain discomfort, satire, and social critique across multiple chapters instead of compressing it into a 90 minute arc.

Danny McBride has likewise expanded his opportunities by bouncing between features and television. Between co-writing the popular series Eastbound & Down and The Righteous Gemstones, he has co-written screenplays for the Halloween film series and proven himself highly adaptable both in terms of medium and genre.  

White and McBride strengthened their storytelling by adapting to different mediums. Episodic writing forces you to think about momentum structurally, not just climactically. When you return to a feature script after building a series engine, you will approach second acts differently: not just as a perfunctory bridge from beginning to end, but as a playground for various conflicts and possibilities. 

John Goodman, Adam Devine, Edi Patterson, and Danny McBride in 'The Righteous Gemstones'

Stage: Dialogue Under Heat

Stage plays remove cinematic distraction. There are no cool visuals to hide weak motivation. No montages to mask thin character development. In a play, characters confront each other directly, often in confined spaces, and the tension must live inside the dialogue.

David Mamet built his storytelling foundation with plays like American Buffalo and Glengarry Glen Ross before transitioning into a sought-after screenwriter of the 1980s and 1990s. In addition to adapting many of his plays for the screen, he wrote the scripts for films like The Untouchables and The Edge. His dialogue is clipped, confrontational, and rhythmically controlled because it was forged under theatrical pressure. Every line must earn its place.

Aaron Sorkin’s trajectory echoes that discipline. From A Few Good Men on stage to film and television, including The West Wing and The Social Network, his writing thrives on verbal sparring. Scenes function as intellectual duels. Conflict intensifies through word choice.

Stage writing forces you to inject subtext purposefully and cleanly. It sharpens character objectives. It also eliminates filler dialogue — because the audience is present and alert. Dialogue is the show.

Martin Sheen in 'The West Wing'

Prose: Interior Architecture and Thematic Depth

Screenwriting externalizes character through behavior and action. Prose allows you to enter the interior space: thought, memory, contradiction, thematic rumination. It helps you to think in macro terms: the big picture. Because of this, in addition to playwrights, many novelists have prospered in Hollywood over the decades.

William Goldman navigated both worlds seamlessly. He wrote novels such as The Princess Bride and then adapted his own work for the screen, while also crafting original screenplays like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President’s Men. His flexibility came from understanding narrative structure beyond format.

Michael Crichton likewise wrote prose and screenplays and excelled as a worldbuilder. He built expansive fictional ecosystems in novels like Jurassic Park, wrote screenplays, and created the television series ER. His ability to design layered systems — scientific, social, procedural — translated across media because his storytelling instincts were conceptual rather than format-bound.

Writing prose forces you to explore deeper themes and character psychology. It demands interior architecture as opposed to learning formulas and tropes. After attempting to write a short story or novel, you will come at screenwriting with greater depth and complexity.

Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford in 'All the President's Men'

Graphic Novels: Visual Impact and Structured Beats

Graphic storytelling is perhaps the closest to screenwriting. As with cinema, comic books and graphic novels rely heavily on visual impact. Panels are structure beats. Page turns function as plot turns. Composition becomes essential to the overall narrative design. 

Robert Kirkman created The Walking Dead comic series long before serving as a scriptwriter and producer on the AMC adaptation and its expanding universe. The structural pacing, episodic cliffhangers, and mounting suspense that defined the television series were refined first in graphic form. It’s embedded in its DNA.

Graphic novels demand visual economy. You cannot rely on dense exposition. You must convey theme, mood, and escalation through imagery and sequence. This skillset benefits screenwriting directly. Action lines become cleaner. You prioritize what must be seen. You eliminate description that doesn’t serve movement.

Many screenplays today are enhanced by cinematic formatting, and what better way to master this than to write in a media that’s hyper visual.

Digital Content: Speed, Voice and Immediate Stakes

Short-form digital writing imposes a different kind of discipline. Writing scripts for YouTube — whether as a film reviewer, pop culture commentator, or comedic essayist — requires immediate clarity. You must establish the premise, your voice, and credibility within seconds.

Podcast scripting, especially in the screenwriting or film industry space, trains structural organization in conversational form. Segments must build logically. Transitions matter as much as punchlines. Similar to a play, every word works to keep us engaged.

Short scripts written for TikTok or Instagram, particularly for comedy writers, sharpen timing under format constraints. There is no room for a slow burn. Setups must be precise. Payoffs must land quickly.

Learning to write digital content increases your ability to quickly and directly engage. It also eliminates narrative indulgence and sharpens your decisiveness. When you return to feature writing after working in short-form spaces, your openings strengthen. You trim exposition. You introduce conflict earlier. You get out of scenes sooner.

In short, you become a leaner and meaner screenwriter.

How To Manage Writing Across Formats

Despite the advantages, there is a risk when writing in various mediums: you can fracture your attention if you don’t effectively manage your projects and it can become mentally overwhelming over time.

This is where organization becomes vital  to your process and divided focus. Clear perimeters need to be constructed between formats so your brain can shift gears — and without carrying residue from one project into another. Creative range requires structural support. 

Multiple mediums. Different drafts. Separate outlines. Research materials. Notes. Without a central environment, you’ll become counterproductive and waste energy locating files rather than refining scenes. 

Cloud-based writing can be a solution to this.

In Final Draft Cloud you can create and manage projects across multiple formats — feature screenplays, television series, stage plays, general prose, graphic novels, digital content — all housed within a single organized Vault. Each project remains distinct, clearly categorized by medium, yet accessible within one workspace.

This organized system can reinforce mental clarity. When you open a feature screenplay, you are in screenwriting mode. When you pivot to a pilot, you know right where it is and the mindset to adopt. When you create a graphic novel, any inspirational images are saved alongside your template. When you experiment with digital scripts, they’re cleanly adjacent to your other writing projects — rather than scattered across disconnected platforms or devices. 

The Vault functions as a command center rather than mere storage. It centralizes your creativity and keeps you from getting mentally overwhelmed.

Diversification Strengthens Screenwriting

Writing across formats strengthens your screenwriting because each medium develops a different storytelling muscle. Television helps you to build renewable engines. Stage sharpens your dialogue. Prose deepens your themes and the psychology of your characters. Graphic storytelling refines your visual clarity. Digital content improves your pacing and audience engagement. Together, these formats expand your structural awareness and creative discipline. 

But diversification only works when it’s well-organized. When your projects are divided thoughtfully and housed within a centralized system, your expansion becomes controlled rather than chaotic.

You don’t lose focus. You gain dimension.

And a multi-dimensional, highly-adaptable writer is a force to be reckoned with.

Even after creating 36 hours of Peaky Blinders for television over six powerful seasons, writer/creator Steven Knight still wasn’t ready to say goodbye to the iconic crime boss Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy). Behold the feature film Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, an explosive, morally charged, family-driven film with supernatural elements that operates as a three-hander: a World War II thriller about a Nazi plot to destabilize Britain, and a ghost story about the memories and spirits that continue to haunt Thomas Shelby, and a father/son reckoning as Tommy, reluctantly passes the torch to his son, Duke (Barry Keoghan). 

We sat down with Knight to find out how he delivered Tommy and the gang into the next era.  

Cillian Murphy and Steven Knight behind the scenes in 'Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man'

A Film was Always the Plan

For Knight, the jump from television to film wasn’t a decision inspired by other British franchises like Downton Abbey that has successfully released three feature films. He says the movie was part of the plan from the very beginning.

“Bizarrely, at the end of the first series when it was just a little thing on BBC Two, I did an interview and I said I’m going to take this all the way to the Second World War and end it with a movie,” Knight says. “Considering what it was at the time, that was a very bold and naive thing to say. But I always wanted to end it with a film.”

'Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man'

A Collective Experience for Fans

Knight’s prolific writing career has always been a mix of television and features, and he felt the story of the Shelby family could naturally exist in both spaces. What mattered most to him was that the film functioned as a true final chapter by having the sprawling criminal empire and family saga merge against the backdrop of World War II. But another motivation was just as important: the fans.

“Peaky Blinders has succeeded because of the fans,” Knight says. “It was never promoted heavily. It was sort of our secret. People would find it and talk to someone else, and they’d love it.”

That grassroots enthusiasm created a community around the show that Knight has encountered everywhere, from pubs in England to international fan events.

“You’d go into a pub and there’d be a bloke who’s a builder or a scaffolder or whatever, someone you wouldn’t imagine to be a fan, who rolls up his trouser leg and says, ‘Look at that,’ and it’s Tommy Shelby tattooed on his leg,” Knight says with a laugh. “That’s real commitment.”

For Knight, making a film offered a way to transform that fandom into a shared theatrical experience.

“What we wanted to do was create a film so that all the fans who have communicated virtually for so long could go to a building, go to the theater, watch it together, dress accordingly if they want to, and feel the emotions together.”

The strategy appears to be working. Screenings in Birmingham, where the show is set, have sold out multiple times a day, beginning early in the morning.

“It’s become an event,” Knight says.

Steven Knight at an event for 'Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man'

The Meaning of 'The Immortal Man'

The film’s title, The Immortal Man, hints at the mythology surrounding Tommy Shelby. But according to Knight, the title came before he fully articulated its meaning.

“The title came before the reason,” he says. Only later did he realize how well it reflected the psychology of the character he had been writing for over a decade.

The key lies in Shelby’s wartime experience. Knight has always imagined a backstory in which Tommy and his fellow soldiers survived a seemingly certain death in the trenches of World War I.

“They were stuck in no man’s land, certain they were going to die,” Knight says. “Certain the Germans were coming to kill them. But they survived.”

After that moment, everything in life felt like borrowed time. “They all said to each other, from now on everything’s a bonus. Everything is extra.”

That mindset became Shelby’s defining trait. “He’s always walked this tightrope between life and death. And in a sense that means he’s immortal,” Knight says.

The film also explores another form of immortality: legacy. In the film, Shelby is writing a book for his children, hoping to pass on lessons he never quite managed to express as a father.

Cillian Murphy in 'Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man'

A Complicated Father-Son Story

Family has always been at the heart of Peaky Blinders, but the film places particular emphasis on the relationship between fathers and sons. 

“I gave Tommy a line that says, ‘I was never a father. I was a form of government,’” Knight says.

Shelby’s sons grow up in the orbit of his reputation, trying to define themselves in relation to a legendary and highly intimidating figure.

“They live in the shadow of him,” Knight says. “Even if Duke Shelby feels he’s rebelling against his father, in actual fact he’s imitating him.”

In the film, Shelby is living in self-imposed exile when events force him back into action. The external plot, sabotaging a Nazi operation, becomes meshed with the internal story of protecting his son.

“The blowing up of the currency is also the saving of the son,” Knight says. “He wants something good to come out of all this.”

Barry Keoghan in 'Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man'

Mining History for Story

One of the film’s central plotlines comes from a real World War II operation that many viewers may never have heard of. Operation Bernhard was a Nazi plan to destabilize the British economy by producing massive quantities of counterfeit pound notes using forced labor from concentration camp prisoners.

“They forged about £350 million,” Knight says. “According to the Bank of England it was the best forgery that had ever been made.”

The plan was hugely ambitious. At one point, the Nazis even considered dropping counterfeit currency from airplanes over British cities.“What an image that would have been,” Knight says.

For Knight, historical facts often serve as the starting point for fiction.

“The true bit is always more remarkable than anything you could make up,” he says. “Then you weave a story around it.”

Rebecca Ferguson in 'Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man'

Father and Son Duke it Out in the Mud

One of the film’s most visceral moments is a brutal confrontation between father and son in a pig pen. It’s a scene that Knight says emerged organically during the writing process.

He had earlier written a small scene involving pigs, but later realized the location could become the setting for a climactic fight. “I thought I should have this confrontation in that environment where it gets to the lowest of the low,” Knight says.

The setting also evokes the trenches of World War I. “Tommy’s experiences in the war were mud and blood,” Knight says. “Now he’s dragging his son down into the mud.”

On set, the sequence became even more chaotic than planned. Production tried to prepare separate areas of “clean mud,” or mud that was devoid of pig excrement. But two days of rain turned the entire set into a filthy swamp and the pigs couldn’t be contained.

“In the end they’re fighting in mud that’s largely a consequence of the pigs,” Knight says. The actors, he adds, could smell exactly what they were standing in. “That’s raw filmmaking,” he says with a laugh. 

Barry Keoghan and Cillian Murphy in 'Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man'

Stories From Home

Despite the epic scope of Peaky Blinders, the idea originated in family stories Knight heard growing up.

His parents were raised in Small Heath, the Birmingham neighborhood where the series is set. “My mum was a bookie runner when she was nine years old,” Knight says.

Children were used to collect illegal bets because they were less likely to be arrested. “She’d walk down the street with a basket of washing,” Knight says. “People would pass by, drop a piece of paper with the horse and the odds and a coin wrapped inside.”

Those small, vivid stories sparked his imagination that led to the Shelby family saga. “They’re the things that made me want to write Peaky Blinders,” Knight says.

Sophie Rundle in 'Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man'

The Next Chapter

Even as Peaky Blinders reaches its cinematic conclusion, Knight’s writing career continues at full speed. Among his current projects is one of the most coveted assignments in film: writing the next installment in the long-running James Bond franchise.

“I can’t tell you anything about it,” he says with a smile. “But that’s what I’m doing and I’m loving it.”

For Knight, it’s the jewel of a lifelong ambition. “Bucket list,” he says simply.

And if his Bond script is half as exhilarating as Peaky Blinders, we’re all in for a treat. 

Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man was written on Final Draft. It streams March 20 on Netflix. 

Connor Hines didn’t plan on becoming a television writer. He was trained as an actor, working in theater after studying at a conservatory in New York. Early on, though, he realized the profession left him creatively unfulfilled.

“You’re just sort of subject to everybody else,” Hines says. “You don’t have access to a creative outlet unless one is given to you.” 

Craving more acting opportunities, he began writing short sketch videos, often built around the simple setup of one half of a very bad Tinder date. These were easy to film and he could act in them. “I just need one other person, a waiter, a table and two chairs,” he says.

Originally, the videos were meant to attract representation. Instead, they gave Hines something more valuable: momentum. “I just remember feeling such a high when I would be writing them,” he says. “When people started responding, I thought, maybe there’s something here.”

That instinct was confirmed when he landed representation and flew to Los Angeles for meetings. Asked if he had ideas for television, Hines couldn’t imagine writing an entire TV show. Then the executives asked what he actually did as his day job. “I told them I was basically a nanny/butler on the Upper East Side,” he says. “They said, ‘Go home and write a pilot about that.’”

Hines did exactly that, teaching himself television writing through repetition. “I found Final Draft,” he says, after babysitting on weekends to afford it, and wrote what he describes as, “a very messy pilot.” Instead of reading craft books, he rewrote constantly. 

“It was just trial and error,” he says. “Writing scripts, getting feedback, realizing what wasn’t working, and figuring out structure on my own.”

Years of writing scripts he says people liked, but nobody wanted to make, built the endurance and discipline that eventually led to Love Story, FX’s romance anthology series. The first season, John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette, centers not on political legacy or tabloid fluff, but on intimacy and the emotional toll of being loved by the world.

Paul Anthony Kelly and Sarah Pidgeon in 'Love Story'

Writing From an Actor’s Body

Hines relies on his instincts as an actor to fuel his writing process. “I perform like I’m in the scene,” he says. “I say the dialogue out loud, on walks, in the shower. If I don’t feel excited to say it, I know there’s something wrong.”

That visceral approach shapes how he thinks about dialogue. “I write from the perspective of, ‘Is this something an actor wants to sink their teeth into?’” he says. Having auditioned for small roles himself, Hines also brings a deep respect for every character on the page. “No character should ever be wasted, no matter how small.”

He cites Nora Ephron as a major influence, pointing to her ability to give even minor characters inner life. “I always think about the mailman in Sleepless in Seattle,” he says. “Two lines, but a whole character.” Those details are what create texture and make a world feel inhabited.

Finding the Humanity Beneath the Public Persona

Hines’ fascination with the whole Kennedy family began as a kind of American royalty obsession. But when he reached John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette, something clicked.

“The biggest thing that stood out to me was the disconnect between the public narrative and how they were described by people who actually knew them.” Carolyn especially, since she was often reduced to an icy, one-dimensional fashion icon. Her friends, though, described someone affectionate, funny, and deeply human. “That gap is where the story was,” Hines says.

Rather than starting with public milestones, Hines began with psychology. He studied their childhoods and formative wounds: John growing up in a fishbowl after losing his father, Carolyn navigating abandonment and fierce independence after her parents’ divorce.

Before breaking the season, Hines wrote what he calls an extremely long psychological dissertation on both characters. His agents advised him not to share it with anyone. “It reads like a professor in psychology,” they warned. But Hines needed it. 

“I wanted to know that if you put them into any situation, I’d immediately know how they’d respond,” he says. “Only then could I move forward.”

Sarah Pidgeon and Paul Anthony Kelly in 'Love Story'

Making It Personal

As with acting, Hines believes writing only works when there’s a personal connection. “Until I can find myself in it, I don’t even know where to begin,” he says.

Hines found unexpected parallels with both John and Carolyn: a complicated relationship with his own father, learning disabilities, pressure to succeed in academic environments where he didn’t thrive. “In John’s case, people valued his charm and looks. He was made to feel like he wasn’t very bright. I had a lot of empathy for that.”

With Carolyn, he connected to her drive and guarded independence. “Growing up closeted, I had that same instinct to prove myself – that edge.”

Those emotional overlaps helped Hines locate the characters’ voices and understand why he was the right person to tell this version of their story.

Paul Anthony Kelly and Naomi Watts in 'Love Story'

Writing Jackie Kennedy

One of the season’s most memorable scenes in the pilot belongs to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (Naomi Watts), whose monologue warns John about the cost of bringing a wife into the Kennedy family that belongs to the public. Hines approached Jackie not as an icon, but as someone who once entered the Kennedy world herself.

“She was a civilian before she married into the institution. Very few people understand what it means to be center stage in that way.”

Hines sees Jackie’s warning not as maternal control but lived experience. It’s an understanding of how a spouse becomes a gatekeeper, a protector, and often a target. 

“You’re made to feel like you’re orbiting something bigger than yourself,” he says. “And that’s an incredibly difficult role to survive.”

Naomi Watts in 'Love Story'

The Episode That Feels Like a Play

Hines points to Episode 8, “Exit Strategy,” as the emotional core of the season. It begins with Carolyn watching news coverage of Princess Diana’s shocking death. Written by Hines and Juli Weiner, the episode isolates John and Carolyn in their apartment, functioning almost like a two-person play.

“We did an exercise where I played John and Juli played Carolyn,” Hines says. “We said the worst things they could ever say to each other.” The goal wasn’t cruelty, but truth. “We knew their wounds. We knew their Achilles’ heels.”

At the height of an argument in the episode, Carolyn says to John, “I’m just another tragedy you bravely endure.” Ouch. But the line says so much about their relationship.  

By keeping them holed up in the apartment, Hines wanted the audience to feel the claustrophobia of living under constant scrutiny. “It becomes a gilded cage,” he says. “Especially for her.”

Advice for Writing Real People

For writers tackling biographical material, Hines cautions against letting history dictate structure. “You can’t just write, ‘And then this happened,’” he says. Instead, he urges writers to understand who their subjects were before they became famous.

“Start with childhood. Start with family,” he says. “Those things inform how people love, how they attach, how they protect themselves. Their coping mechanisms.”

Most importantly, he advises stripping away fame entirely. “You have to approach every character like they’re not famous,” he says. “Fame is something projected onto them. Nobody looks in the mirror and sees a celebrity. They see the same person they’ve always been.”

That perspective allows Love Story to do what biopics often struggle to achieve: telling the truth without it feeling like a history lesson. “It helps to love your characters. And it helps to want to protect them while still being honest about who they were.”

In Love Story, that honesty transforms icons into human beings who are fragile, intimate, and devastatingly real.

Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette is currently airing on FX. 

Jason Kaleko’s screenplay ‘Effigy’ won the Final Draft Big Break horror category before ultimately taking the Feature Grand Prize in the 2023 screenwriting competition. For a writer who had already spent years writing and wondering whether the effort was leading anywhere, the win was a clear message that he was on the right path, especially as a genre writer. 

“I’m a horror writer. My whole goal in life is just to scare people,” he says, adding, “Winning Big Break has definitely been a huge part of everything that’s happening now.” 

‘Effigy’ begins with a hauntingly creative premise. The story follows a woman whose estranged father, a legendary painter in the mold of Jackson Pollock, has died. Though he was never really part of her life, the art world mourns him as a genius. To his daughter’s surprise, he leaves her the studio where he spent the last decade of his life. Hoping to explore her own artistic side, she takes a break from her day job as a paralegal and heads to the isolated studio where she plans to spend some time expressing her own emotions through paint. Instead, she discovers the art studio appears to be haunted by her father’s spirit.

Then things get stranger.

At the center of the script is a mannequin that seems to act as a conduit for the dead man, until the daughter realizes that whatever is speaking to her may not be her father at all. ‘Effigy’ is the kind of contained, escalating nightmare that horror thrives on: isolated woods, mounting dread, and a woman forced to ask what exactly she has invited into her life. 

At the time of his win, Kaleko was living in Los Angeles and making a living as a copywriter. His professional work included writing for companies like Fox Entertainment and Peacock, often on the marketing side.

“Sometimes I’d be writing commercials, sometimes billboards, or maybe internal documents, things like that. But my passion really is storytelling, and writing my own ideas,” he says.

That passion is now taking up more space in his work life. Kaleko says he is currently taking meetings off a newer spec script with his manager, Dallaslyn Lamb, and writing horror novels. His debut book, The Joplin Horror, is slated for release in spring 2027.

Kaleko says the timing of the Big Break win was crucial. He was already taking meetings with managers when the competition announcements began rolling in, allowing him to update prospective reps as he advanced from quarterfinalist to semifinalist to finalist. By the time he won, the contest had become a meaningful part of the story he was telling about himself as a writer.

“I definitely think it helped push me over the edge for them,” he says.

He signed with Dallaslyn Lamb and Matt Rosen at Rain Management Group, and though both have since moved on from Rain, Kaleko remains with Lamb.

“She’s the best,” he says. “I’ve had managers before, and she’s by far the best. She’s a true champion for the stories that I want to tell.”

When it came time to decide which sample to send out first, the answer was obvious. “I was like, well, it’s got to be ‘Effigy’,” Kaleko says.

That visibility helped them get the script read, land general meetings, and eventually put ‘Effigy’ in front of producer Justine Conte, who had recently come off Killers of the Flower Moon. The script is now optioned through Nina Pictures.

For an emerging writer, that kind of chain reaction is the dream: one strong script, one well-timed accolade, one open door that leads to another. But when asked what meant the most about winning, Kaleko doesn’t point to the meetings, the option, or even the financial prize package, which included cash, an iPad, and a laptop he still uses. He points to something more internal.

“When you’re a writer, you’re always kind of wondering if this thing that you think has a lot of value actually has value,” he says. “As a screenwriter, there’s very few ways to figure out if you’re crazy or not.”

That’s where a competition like Big Break can matter on a level that goes beyond getting notice.

“The real value, aside from the connections you make, and the people you meet, and the prize, is just the validation, frankly, that you’re not crazy,” he says.

For Kaleko, that validation came after a long road. He says he had written more than 35 scripts before he wrote ‘Effigy’. That detail is what makes his advice especially valuable for writers who are trying to decide whether entering a contest is worth it.

“It’s worth it,” he says. “It’s worth it even if you don’t win, just to get a gauge on what you’re doing, and if you’re going in the right direction.”

He also points out that placement alone can be useful. Quarterfinalist or semifinalist status from a well-respected contest can help legitimize a query letter. But his biggest practical advice is to always be writing. 

“Once you do get those meetings, people will usually say, ‘I loved your script. It’s not for me,’” he says. “And they’re going to ask, ‘What else do you have?’”

That inevitable question means the real job is not just to finish a screenplay good enough to get attention, but to become the kind of writer who always has another one ready.

“If you want to be a writer, you have to be writing the next thing.”

For writers looking at contests as a possible next step, Kaleko’s story offers a useful reminder that one script can open the door, but it’s all the drafts and years of studying the craft that will keep you going. Learn more about Final Draft's Big Break Screenwriting Contest here.