Pros and cons of screenwriting as a group — Founding our screenwriting group was one of the best things that happened to me. We started as four. A year later we became five and wrote more than a dozen TV shows over the next twelve years. Some of my friends occasionally work together to this day. …

It wasn’t even a real prompt, but it successfully prompted me! — I studied city planning in Turkey. I was supposed to work as a grown-up at serious local government offices after my graduation. But before that happened, I realized, it wasn’t me. I needed something else. I was interested in everything other than city planning. I loved music, photography, writing, multimedia…

Murderers’ hands, for example — Some words make me want to throw up. Recently I saw a smear campaign on Twitter and I can’t think of much anything else ever since. The back story In July 2020 in Turkey, a 32-year-old married man Cemal Metin Avcı strangled Pınar Gültekin, a young student with whom he had an affair…

Drama is conflict, high stakes are everything — “I was forced to endure this I cannot believe I was forced to endure this movie in a class I took at college. Synopsis: 12 men sit in a room and talk for the ENTIRE movie.” From IMDb 12 Angry Men (1957) is a miracle film! As the viewer above…

Trying to be original might be hurting your chance of coming up with great film ideas — If you asked me about the happiest day of my life, I would say the day we sold four projects to a producer in one meeting. Yep! It really happened. But it came after years of drudgery. When we first founded our screenwriting group, we were hired to write scripts…

Sometimes it is rude to say thank you — When my son was a baby, I learned that I could be rude by saying “thank you.” I was rude to my mother on a regular basis. …

This is what our producer told us — My screenwriting group and I took pride in writing the most grown-up show on Turkish TV, not one of those silly soap operas of the mid-2000s. It was a political period drama. The first mainstream prime-time TV show in Turkey that bravely criticized the military coup d’etat of 1980. It…

The short answer is no and yes! — When our elderly neighbors found out that I was a screenwriter, they invited me to their house for an afternoon tea. They told me stories about their life. They were high school sweethearts from a small town. Their dads hated each other but they still got married. All of a…

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a story with good bones must be adapted over and over again — Years ago, one of my screenwriter friends worked on an adaptation of Jane Austen’s 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice for Turkish TV. They announced the project to the media as the Turkish remake of the famous novel. It took place in a farmhouse in the south of Turkey. Their Mr…