377 episodes listed below
Screenwriting craft with honest room tone.
The Screenwriting Life pairs practical screenwriting talk with candid accounts of the emotional weather around making things. Recent episodes move from workshop notes and mailbag questions to vertical microdramas, audio fiction, Pixar story process, creative partnership, and indie film problem-solving.
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The Screenwriting Life is built around the practical, emotional, and occasionally chaotic reality of being a working screenwriter. It is warm without becoming vague. The show’s strongest episodes sound like writers comparing notes at close range, then turning those notes into usable craft. A conversation may start with a hard writing week, a community workshop check-in, or a joke about process, but it usually lands on a sharper question: what does the character want, why this format, where is the scene really happening, and what is the draft trying to become? Recent workshop episodes show writers talking through outlines, beat sheets, page-one rewrites, and the moment when preparation starts turning into avoidance. Mailbag installments bring the same directness to industry questions, including animated features, buyers, samples, and the realities of making a project legible to the market. The show is especially good at separating encouragement from fantasy. It can be nurturing and ruthless in the same exchange. Interviews keep the range wide. Shelby Farrell’s episode on vertical microdramas looks at short-form mobile storytelling as formula-aware, audience-driven comfort viewing rather than a punchline. Aaron Tracy’s conversation on audio fiction connects television writing, novels, directing, and immersive scripted sound. Jesse Andrews’ visit brings Pixar into focus through reels, rewrites, animation process, and the strange path by which a script sample can open a door. A roundtable with Maggie Gottlieb, David F. M. Vaughn, and Sean Prezant turns the idea of finding your people into a concrete account of trust, tight production schedules, and creative loyalty. Episodes on collaboration with Joe Forte and Meg LeFauve add another angle, using partnership as a way to talk about creative friction and support. The show also keeps pointing listeners toward workshops, live Zooms, pitch documents, worksheets, and feedback spaces, so the advice is tied to practice rather than theory alone. It is not a lecture series. It is a lived-in craft conversation for people who are writing, stuck, revising, pitching, or trying to understand why a draft will not behave. Its value comes from specificity: scenes, beats, formats, rooms, buyers, collaborators, and the emotional maintenance required to keep going.
Made for: For screenwriters, filmmakers, TV writers, audio storytellers, and serious beginners who want process talk grounded in drafts and industry constraints. It especially suits writers who need both technical clarity and candid company.
What sets it apart: The show blends craft notes with the emotional life of writing instead of treating process as a clean checklist. Its best conversations turn personal friction, workshop feedback, and guest career paths into concrete story-level advice.
Welcome to The Screenwriting Life, a podcast where Oscar-nominated writer Meg LeFauve and Emmy-nominated writer Lorien McKenna discuss not only the craft and business of Screenwriting, but also the emotional life: the ups and downs of being a creative, to remind you that you are not alone and to keep writing.
A blank page meets its natural predators: Meg LeFauve and Lorien McKenna asking what actually works.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded workshop conversation about outlines, feedback, and the point where a writer finally starts the draft.
The Screenwriting Life uses a TSL Workshops conversation to examine how writers turn feedback into the next draft. Lorian McKenna speaks with Danica and Emily about when they pitch work, what notes have stayed with them, and where their scripts sit now.
Jesse Andrews explains how Pixar writing changes through successive reels and rewrites.
A Pixar story about an animal lover whose mind ends up in a robotic beaver is quite a premise. Jesse Andrews gives Meg LeFauve a clear account of how writing Hoppers worked after the script became reels.
Meg LeFauve and Joe Forte join Lorian McKenna to talk about writing together after decades as partners.
The Screenwriting Life brings Meg LeFauve and Joe Forte together with host Lorian McKenna for a conversation about collaboration. McKenna introduces them as partners in life and in the film industry for more than 30 years.
Indie film advice with real-world pressure.
Filmmaking talk from inside the workflow.
Hollywood talk with the machinery exposed.
Horror craft, cult memory, and monster talk.
Lorian McKenna rebroadcasts an interview with the creative team behind Hulu's horror film Carved, discussing their joyful approach to the genre.
Lorian McKenna interviews two writers about their experiences pitching stories in TSL Workshops and the feedback they received.
Screenwriter Shelby Farrell discusses the emerging vertical microdrama market and how traditional writers can transition into this new format.
Lorian McKenna and guests discuss the meaning of 'finding your people' in the screenwriting industry through their collaborative experiences on the show Tab Time.
Meg and Lorian answer listener questions about screenwriting, sharing personal experiences and advice.
Lorian McKenna interviews Aaron Tracy about his career as a storyteller and creator of successful audio dramas.
Jesse Andrews talks with Meg LeFauve on The Screenwriting Life about moving from Harvard art history and unreadable novels to Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Luca, and Pixar’s Hoppers.
Meg LeFauve and Joe Forte, who have been partners for over 30 years and now write together on projects for Netflix Films, describe collaboration as a mix of boundaries, trust, and shared vocabulary.
Lorian McKenna interviews the creative team behind Hulu's horror film Carved about their joyful creative process.
Filmmaking duo The Bragg Brothers discuss how they turned the true story of pinball's legalization into a budget-friendly indie biopic and sold it.
Meg LaFoe and Laurie McKenna discuss writing retreats and collaboration with filmmaker Joe Forte, exploring how to work with a partner in life and work.
Trey Edward Shults discusses his collaboration with The Weeknd on 'Hurry Up Tomorrow' and his approach to vulnerable storytelling and micro-budget filmmaking.