Interview (Part 6): Amy Berg

My Q&A with a top Hollywood TV showrunner.

Amy Berg is a writer and TV producer whose credits include Leverage, Person of Interest, Eureka, Caper, Da Vinci’s Demons, and the current hit STARZ series Counterpart. I crossed paths with Amy several years ago the way many writers do nowadays: via Twitter. In 2017, I reached out to Amy to do an interview and what followed was a months’ long back and forth via email.

Today in Part 6, Amy answers some writing craft questions:

Scott: Okay, a few craft questions. How do you come up with story ideas?

Amy: For me, there’s no set formula but you always want your characters to lead the plot rather than plot leading your characters. The way to generate story ideas organically is to think about what challenges to put in front of your characters to get them to make choices that reveal something about them.

Scott: How do you go about developing your characters? Any specific tips or tools you find yourself using regularly?

Amy: At the end of the day, the only thing that really defines a person is the choices they make. The characters in your scripts should be no different. And not just protagonists and antagonists. Every character. If you go through your script and find characters populating it who don’t make any choices for themselves… they’re not characters, they’re window dressing.

You have to take your characters through obstacle courses. If you’re relying on dialogue alone to distinguish them, that’s not going to work. The way to create characters who are their own person is to force them into situations that require them to be opinionated and make choices… then having them make different ones.

Scott: What about dialogue? How do you go about finding your characters’ voices? How can a writer develop their ability writing dialogue?

Amy: The question I get most from the writers I mentor or from folks I meet at events and festivals is how to create voices that are unique to each character. I tell them not to rely on personality quirks. That’s cheating. Voice has to come from the inner life of the character. Where to they come from and where are they going? Are there things they find annoying or endearing that other people don’t because of who they are?

The last thing you want to do is study scripts to learn how to write dialogue. Studying scripts is good for learning about scene and act structure and building tension, but please do not use that as your book learning for writing dialogue. Dialogue in any script is already a heightened version of reality, so if you’re using that as your model your own dialogue is going to be even more heightened and thus inauthentic.

The best thing to do is be a listener in life. Study the world and the people around you. Be a fly on the wall and absorb the reality we’re in, not the representation of it in film and TV. There is so much to out there still to be mined. So many unique voices yet to be discovered.

Scott: How would you define theme? How important is it? Do you start with themes or do they arise in the context of developing and writing the story?

Amy: Theme is what gives your story coherence. It is the unifying idea. At its core, what is the film or TV series about? If it’s an original idea, I usually start from character. But if I’m adapting something, I usually start with theme. Why is this a story I personally want to tell, and why is it a story that needs telling?

Most people think there is only one “why now?” question and it’s the question as to why are we coming into this story at this exact moment in time. What’s the thing that’s happened to make this the perfect jumping off point for your plot. But there’s a larger “why now?” question I think we all need to ask. And that’s why the hell are we telling this story in the first place, and why that matters in relation to what’s going on in the world right now. Obviously not all stories are meant to have a societal impact, but we need to find something however small to attach our theme to… even in the raunchiest of comedies.

Scott: What do you think about when writing a scene? What are your goals?

Amy: Efficiency, for starters. It shouldn’t be any longer than what it needs to be. But more importantly, if your scene doesn’t reveal something new about one of your characters there’s no need for it to exist. That’s really the only barometer that matters.

Scott: Finally, what advice can you offer to aspiring screenwriters and TV writers about the learning the craft and breaking into Hollywood?

Amy: It’s not easy, but nothing worthwhile ever is.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Part 2, here.

Part 3, here.

Part 4, here.

Part 5, here.

Follow Amy on Twitter: @bergopolis

For more exclusive Go Into The Story interviews with screenwriters, TV writers, filmmakers, and industry insiders, go here.