Screenwriting 101: Tess Morris

“You have to be persistent, you must not give up, and you must find all sorts of ways not to give up. Because it’s a terrible job for your mental health. You spend a lot of time on your own. You face a lot of rejection. And if you can’t cope with those things or you don’t have the support network to help you with those things, then you probably won’t stay in it for that long.

Very important to have the right temperament. Until you’re super‑successful and have your Malibu beach house and are earning so much money that you don’t care whether you get a job or you don’t get a job, it’s very important to know how to receive notes, and to act upon those notes and to deal with producers, and to deal with actors, and to deal with script editors.

So you have to be calm and wise and it takes a long time to feel like that. It’s a very exposing job. You’ve poured your heart and soul into what you’ve written and suddenly you’ve got someone going, ‘Oh, I don’t like that line. You don’t need that line’. You can’t take things personally. You’ve got to learn how to let it go.

But you’ve also got to know when to pick your battles as well. So it’s a fine line, really, that you have to walk.”

— Tess Morris

From Go Into The Story interview, June 2015

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