Brian Landwehr and Bailey Patterson
27 episodes listed below
Writing craft without the showroom shine.
Living To Write talks with working writers about the odd, practical machinery behind film and television writing. The conversations move from origin stories into writers' rooms, pitch delays, vomit drafts, preschool animation, film criticism, and the long wait for one yes.
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Living To Write is a writing craft show with its feet on the floor. It talks to writers, writing teams, studio figures, and film thinkers about how careers and scripts actually take shape. The pace is patient. Brian Landwehr and Bailey Patterson tend to open with simple, almost friendly questions, then let guests explain the long route between ambition and a usable page. That makes the show especially good at catching process before it becomes advice. A comedy team can start with ego in a writers' room and end up talking about how collaboration changes the way jokes and plot points are found. Another pair can describe the so-called vomit draft, not as a cute term, but as a way to keep early pages loose enough to survive criticism. Rachel Shukert gives the show one of its strongest practical notes: selling something is not the same as seeing it move quickly. That kind of industry slowness can feel personal until someone explains that it is often just the machine moving at machine speed. James Eason Garcia brings a different pressure into focus. Writing preschool animation means repeatable moments, pattern recognition, executive notes, education review, and the quiet fact that young audiences learn from almost everything placed in front of them. The Paul Schrader episode is different by design, built from a Story Summit lecture rather than a standard podcast recording. It trades studio polish for access to a discussion of criticism, Calvinist upbringing, transcendental style, and the strange bridge between religious training and cinema. The David Paul Kirkpatrick episodes lean into Hollywood memory from the reader's desk up through studio leadership. They also carry the show toward blunt questions about why scripts fail, why some talent gets shepherded, and how the business looks from the other side of the submission pile. The series is not allergic to jokes. It is also not trying to turn every guest into a motivational poster. Its better instinct is to notice the contradiction: writing is private, but careers are communal; taste matters, but so does stamina; a room can bruise the ego and still make a writer better. For emerging writers, that mix is useful. For film and television fans, it gives texture to names and credits that usually pass by too fast.
Made for: Best for emerging writers, television obsessives, and film craft listeners who want candid career mechanics alongside story talk. It also suits anyone curious about how scripts change inside rooms, pitches, notes, and long production waits.
What sets it apart: The show gives guests enough space to explain the messy middle of writing: slow deals, shared drafts, room politics, preschool responsibility, and career accidents. It feels less like a lecture series and more like a working writer asking what the job is really like.
Join screenwriters Brian Landwehr and Bailey Patterson as they dive into conversations with accomplished writers, exploring their creative processes, triumphs, challenges, and insights. Discover behind-the-scenes stories from your favourite films and TV shows, discussing how initial drafts evolve into the final product with advice from those who LIVE TO WRITE. Presented in collaboration with David Kirkpatrick, founder of Story Summit. This podcast features candid, unfiltered discussions with genuine individuals. Produced by Brian Landwehr and Bailey Patterson.
Based on 4 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Brian Landwehr and Bailey Patterson turn screenwriting careers into concrete lessons about collaboration, production, creative responsibility, and persistence.
Living To Write makes professional screenwriting legible by asking guests how ideas survive collaboration, production systems, and the long wait between a promising meeting and actual work. Brian Landwehr and Bailey Patterson keep their questions close to practice.
A sold TV show can take a year to reach the writers' room; your patience deserves company.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A long writing career gets sharper when room work is treated as craft, not myth.
Brian Landwehr's conversation with the comedy team follows a long writing life: sketch clips online, UCB, Cartoon Network, network rooms, and then a return to stage work after years of moving between formats.
A calm look at the slow, practical path from pitch to production.
Rachel Shukert's conversation on Living to Write stays on the work itself: selling a show, waiting for the deal to close, and then finally getting into the room. That narrow focus works.
A practical look at preschool animation writing inside a franchise system.
The episode follows James Eason Garcia through the craft of writing for animation and preschool viewers, from production coordinator on Elena of Avalor to writer on Young Jedi Adventures and now story editor and co-executive producer on Iron Man and his awesome friends.
A lecture-shaped portrait of Schrader's path from criticism to cinema.
Paul Schrader is treated less as a career summary than as a sustained argument about how belief, criticism, and style can meet in one body of work.
A patient look at how two writers shape a script together.
This Living to Write episode focuses on Dan Greger and Doug Mann and the practical work of collaboration: the vomit draft, the notes that follow, and the repeated back-and-forth that lets each scene be rewritten, polished, and worn over many times.
Writerly chats from manuscript to book deal.
Craft talk from the working writer trenches.
Screenwriting shop talk from working writers.
Practical fiction craft, down to the sentence.
Living To Write talks with screenwriters Miles Hubbley and Tommy White and director Scott Waugh about their first produced feature, the action film Runner starring Alan Ritchson and Owen Wilson.
Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher look back on a two-person comedy career that got bigger than two people.
Rachel Shukert shows up with a lot behind her.
Preschool writing gets real attention here.
Paul Schrader starts far from the movies.
A writing team starts with wet clay, not a clean marble block.
In this episode, former Paramount president David Paul Kirkpatrick shares industry advice and a wild Hollywood story involving Michael Jackson and Madonna.
Brian Landwehr and Bailey Patterson introduce David Paul Kirkpatrick, a former Hollywood executive and founder of Story Summit, on their podcast about writing.
Brian Landwehr and Bailey Patterson introduce their podcast Living to Write and discuss Tracy Ullman.
Brian Landwehr and Bailey Patterson introduce the podcast Living to Write, discussing their current writing projects and the joy of rewriting.
Brian Landwehr and Bailey Patterson introduce their guest Jessica Welsh, a TV writer who sold a spec screenplay after making the blacklist, and discuss a missed meeting at a writing event.