Behind the best professionals
in every field are great coaches.

Who's your coach???

This guy?	Him?	Her?

Good news for Screenwriters—Coach Vera can be YOUR coach!!

When people learn that I'm a screenwriting coach, they’re intrigued. They’re familiar with coaches for athletes, actors, students and even politicians, so they’re curious to know how I work with writers and what writers are able to achieve when they have a private coach.

To share a bit of what I do for my clients, here are some of my thoughts on the one-to-one coaching process.

One-to-One Coaching for Screenwriters:
How it Works

Working one-to-one with other screenwriters is the very heart of my practice. And my passion. Helping screenwriters complete their screenplays gives me a deep satisfaction. My passion for coaching screenwriters also informs my work in the analysis or 'covering' of screenplays that I provide.

In my 20-plus years of being a writer and helping other writers to write, I’ve learned that one-to-one coaching works equally well for all writers, whether beginners or seasoned professionals. Think about it: The New York Yankees still have batting and pitching coaches for their multi-million dollar players, right? Alex Rodriguez didn’t decline any further coaching when he signed the richest contract ever for a baseball player, did he? Good coaching is wanted and needed throughout a dedicated professional’s career—whether a writer, or a shortstop, or a CEO.

Yet there’s no getting around it: writing is solitary work. However, working with a writing coach gives you a partner in the process of creating. This I believe: Every writer can and will be more productive (and suffer fewer hangovers ;-) when they work with a good private coach.

A good private coach is a writer’s Top Secret Renewable Energy Resource, providing encouragement, direction, alternatives, shared experience, and most importantly, someone to be accountable to. (More on that later.)

I’m not a big fan of lists, but in the interests of brevity, here’s a partial list of how a good coach helps a writer—

* Assessment
As a writer, where are you? Wherever you are, that’s where we start. We talk about you, and your work. We assess your current project, from story to theme to structure.

* Intention
Where do you want to go? How productive do you want to be? How many hours per week are you willing to devote to your quest? Want to finish that screenplay by Christmas or your next birthday? Together we develop what I call an Intention Contract, complete with a time line and intermediate deadlines and checkpoints along the way. This Intention Contract with yourself, and with me as witness and partner, is a powerful way to keep you moving toward your goal—and making your dream a reality.

* Accountability
Being accountable is at the root of every successful creative person’s strategy. Think about it: In our daily lives, when we don’t show up when and where we’re supposed to, people know it. To get us all to show up, we receive consistent validation—usually in the form of a paycheck. Not so with the creative act of writing. Because we are not accountable to anyone else, it’s far too easy for us to give in to the temptation of going surfing or to watch a movie during the 3-hour block we’ve set aside for writing. “Who’s gonna know that I didn’t write today?” Well, if I’m your coach, the answer is me! I’m going to know, and more importantly, I’m going to care. Being accountable to me will help keep you on track to your goal.

* Response
You choose how often you want to meet with me for working sessions, whether in person, by email, or most likely, over the phone. You send your pages ahead of time and I’ll have read them and prepared feedback and response for our session. This is the heart of what I do, it’s how you and your coach combine creative energies. And it’s where so much of the benefits of working with your own private screenwriting coach comes from.

* Inspiration
We all encounter tough spots, often it’s in the middle of the 2nd act of our screenplay. Sometimes we’re tired of even looking at the thing. Sometimes we’ve lost our vision, our hope, and we can’t seem to get going again. This is another way a coach is vital. Your coach can help troubleshoot your story problems, or reasons for your writer’s block—and offer ways to overcome them. A coach has a strong relationship with you and your project. As your coach, I hold fast to your visions and enthusiasm, even when you my falter.

* Evaluation
Want to know if coaching is really working? The proof is in the writing. A great thing about having a coach is that you know constantly whether it’s working or not, because you are overcoming the obstacles as they arise, and moving toward the goal, which is always the same: Completing your project. You’re writing more pages. You’re writing better pages! Your coach is helping keep you on task, keep you doing the work, writing the pages, and honoring your intention. Many coaching clients have told me that the greatest encouragement they get is simply seeing the continual progress they are making.

Completion
This is true: Nothing happens until you complete your project. Only then have you told your story. Only when your screenplay is completed will you experience the true and deep and lasting thrill of success. And that’s why you’ve chosen the difficult challenge of being a creator, isn’t it?

Joseph Campbell had a wealth of beautiful advice and encouragement to offer creators like you—those who have chosen to make the Hero’s Journey—

"A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself... The adventure of the hero is the adventure of being alive... It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure... The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure."