Interview (Part 5): Juliet Giglio and Keith Giglio
My conversation with the screenwriting couple whose first novel The Summer of Christmas has just been released to the public.
My conversation with the screenwriting couple whose first novel The Summer of Christmas has just been released to the public.
Juliet Giglio and Keith Giglio are a husband-wife screenwriting duo who cover a lot of territory of interest to Go Into The Story readers. They write everything from studio features to TV movies and now novels with the release of The Summer of Christmas. They also teach screenwriting: Juliet at SUNY Oswego and Keith at Syracuse University.
Recently, I had an entertaining and informative interview with the pair. Today in Part 5 of a 6-part series to run each day through Sunday, Juliet and Keith discuss their process as a writing duo.
Scott: I got a question I’ll bet no one’s asked you. Now you’ve done and you’ve written this, this is not one, you’re on your second novel, will that impact at all how you approach screenwriting, the process? Have you learned anything or become different writers now when you go back to screenwriting?
Keith: I don’t know.
Juliet: That’s a really good question. We’re trying to decide if we want to do a script next or another book.
Keith: That’s a big thing.
Juliet: We’re trying to decide because there’s a part of us that really liked writing the book.
[laughter]
Scott: I should note, Keith also wrote a couple of non‑fiction books, Writing the Comedy Blockbuster, Writing Great Video Games. I don’t know about you, Keith, but when I wrote The Protagonist’s Journey, it almost killed me. That type of writing is so different and so hard.
Keith: [laughs] It’s really hard.
Juliet: We actually wrote a screenplay book together called “Proof of Concept ‑‑ Writing the Short Script.” That was kind of fun to write, but it was academic, I like to have my students reading it because it sound like I’m talking.
Keith: That book was read by somebody who works for CNY Arts, Central New York Arts. They said, “We found your book. Can you turn it into a film festival?”
Juliet: No, no, no. A film contest.
Keith: A competition, film contest.
Juliet: We want to figure a way to keep more filmmakers, keep them up in upstate New York. Keith and I…
Keith: …created this competition.
Juliet: We created this competition where every year, four young screenwriters, they each get $40,000 to make a short film.
Juliet: $160,000 is given out each year. We sat down. We created the parameters like, “Well, they should be under 30. Yeah, no credits. They have to have gone to one of these schools.” Syracuse, SUNY Oswego…
Scott: Wow. That’s great. Congratulations on the book. Let’s ask a couple of craft questions. First of all, most of the TV movies, are they Lifetime movies that you’ve done?
Juliet: Yeah. The Christmas ones have all been Lifetime.
Keith: They’ve been done with Melissa Joan Hart and Paula Hart producing. It was a nice run. Lifetime has cut back on those, so we don’t have one this year. That’s fine because we have the book.
Scott: I’ve known some people who’ve done the Hallmark Christmas thing. They’ve got that very specific nine acts, I think it is.
Keith: Nine‑act structure.
Scott: Is that the same for Lifetime?
Keith: Hundred percent.
Juliet: Yeah. What’s interesting though our first movie with them, we didn’t have the nine‑act structure. The second one, they were a little more clear about it. Of course, it’s exactly what you think. You just have a lot more commercials as the movie goes on.
Keith: We had good teams working with us. We enjoyed the executives.
Juliet: We did. Paula Hart, our producer was terrific. She got great actors. We had Jason Priestley on one of the movies. We had John Schneider with Reba, of course. That was huge. Even all the secondary actors were big, too.
Keith: The first one, A Very Nutty Christmas. My favorite part of that was the night it premiered, The New York Times said what to watch this weekend is The Shining and A Very Nutty Christmas was the headline.
[laughter]
Juliet: That was great. That was about when Nutcracker comes to life and Melissa Joan Hart falls in love with him. She was terrific in that part.
Scott: Okay, how about this: How do you go about breaking story? Do you have a process? You mentioned the cards…
Juliet: We do. We use index cards in the very beginning, where we’re just writing down any old idea, and then we toss them on a pile. Eventually, we take that stack of cards, and we start spreading it around. Then, once we feel comfortable with that, we’ll type it into…We found Google Docs works really well for us.
Keith: Google Docs is great because you can be online together — collaboratively. If you have students who listen to us, and they’re writing collaboratively, try WriterDuet. It’s the only program where both writers could be on the same document at the same time.
Juliet: In terms of the screenplay, we outline like crazy. If we’re writing a screenplay, or even this book, we’ll have 30 pages of outline material in the Google doc, so we have a lot to go on. When we each take that chapter, or if we each take a scene. We have a road map, which helps us a lot.
Tomorrow in Part 6, Juliet and Keith share tips on how to develop as a writer and break into the business.
For Part 1 of the interview, go here.
Part 2, here.
Part 3, here.
Part 4, here.
Juliet and Keith are repped by WME.
The Story of Christmas: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Good Reads.