9 Big Differences Between Amateur and Professional Writers — Brandon Violette [FULL INTERVIEW]

Photo by Samuel Regan-Asante on Unsplash

Film Courage: Brandon, I believe it took you 10 years to get your first screenwriting credit. I’m wondering if we can go back to the beginning.

Brandon Violette, Screenwriter / Founder and Host of The Story Series Podcast: Yeah. I was close to graduating high school.

During high school, growing up, all I wanted to be was an artist.

I was drawing obsessively.

And in high school, I had this insight that I was a mediocre artist at best.

But through that was really a love of storytelling and filmmaking.

I was drawing but trying to draw stories.

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It wasn’t until I got out of high school and found my way through community college, College of the Canyons, and stumbled into a film production 101 class that that cemented it for me.

It was all about screenwriting and filmmaking and I did not have the grades to go to a typical kind of university.

But that community college experience helped me find what I wanted to do, which was to tell stories through writing instead of drawing…(**Watch the video interview on YouTube here**).

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About:

Brandon Violette was most recently the Head Writer for RoboGobo and Pupstruction at Disney Television Animation and the Co-Creator/Head Writer of CoComelon Lane (Moonbug/Netflix), one of Netflix’s top-performing preschool series. His writing credits span hit shows including Dew Drop Diaries (DreamWorks), Pupstruction (Disney Junior), T.O.T.S. (Disney Junior), Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go! (Mattel), and Stretch Armstrong & The Flex Fighters (Hasbro Studios). In addition to his screenwriting work, Brandon is the host of The Story Series Podcast, where he interviews writers, showrunners, filmmakers, author and creators about story structure, character development, pitching and the creative mindset. Before moving to Los Angeles, Brandon studied at the Beijing Film Academy and continues to return to China as a guest lecturer, sharing insights on storytelling, animation, and the global landscape of entertainment.

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About Film Courage: Est. in 2009, Film Courage features video interviews/podcasts from screenwriters, filmmakers, authors, and actors on the creative process. New videos daily at 5:00 p.m.