Writing
On the Work
Notes on process — how a screenplay gets from an idea to a finished draft.
Character First
Every project starts with a person, not a plot. Before James outlines a sequence of events, he works out who the story is about — what they want, what they're avoiding, and what they're wrong about. Structure follows from there. A scene earns its place by revealing something about a character under pressure, not by advancing plot mechanics for their own sake.
Discovery Drafting
Early drafts are written to find the story, not to lock it in. James works from a loose outline and lets scenes surprise him — dialogue that reveals an unplanned dynamic between two characters, or a moment of humor that recontextualizes a dramatic beat. Those discoveries get folded back into a revised outline before the next pass.
Humor and Drama, Balanced
Most of the material leans toward character-driven drama, but comedy is rarely far from the surface — the way people deflect, argue, and misread each other under stress. James treats humor as a tool for honesty rather than relief: a joke that lands usually says something true about the character telling it.
Revision, Table Reads, and Reader Feedback
A draft is a starting point for testing, not a finished object. James relies on table reads and outside reader feedback to find where a scene plays differently on the page than it does out loud — where a line is doing too much explaining, or where an actor would naturally cut against the written intention. Revision is iterative: structural passes for story logic, then line-level passes for voice and rhythm.
Where Acting and Photography Come In
Before screenwriting, James spent time in front of the camera as an actor and behind it as a photographer. Both backgrounds show up in the writing: an actor's instinct for what a performer can actually do with a line, and a photographer's instinct for composition, framing, and the visual information a scene carries before anyone speaks. Neither is the focus of the work now — both quietly shape how a scene is built.
Development, Not Production
The work described here is script development — outlining, drafting, table reads, and revision — carried out both through the UCLA Professional Program in Screenwriting and independently. Full screenplay text is not published publicly; the Projects page describes the current slate at a high level.