At aTVFest this year, among a few others, we got to chat with the writers of Z: The Beginning of Everything, the Amazon series based on the novel on the life of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, lover, wife and muse of F. Scott Fitzgerald, produced by and starring Christina Ricci. The dynamic writing team made up of Dawn Prestwich and Nicole Yorkin (Judging Amy, The Killing, Chicago Hope, Picket Fences) gave us some seriously insightful words into being a woman writer on a male-dominant show, writing for Z and most importantly, the role mistakes play in writing. Enjoy, and remember not to be afraid to make mistakes…ever.
HCSCADATL: What do you think…are the two or three ways that you would say, or give as advice to creative women to also have a voice to speak about what they really believe in creatively, as actors or artists or writers?
Dawn Prestwich: Just tell your story; write what you love. Be true to who you are. Don’t try to be anything but, you know, who you are, and say what you wanna say about a character. And uh, fight for it.
Nicole Yorkin: When we started which is probably about 25 years ago; it’s interesting because we were just doing some research for an award we were giving to a friend and we were looking at how many women writers are writing for TV now, and there were about 25% working writers are women. And, that was 1999; 2015, 29%. So, it hasn’t really gotten that much better. There’s more women showrunners now, but…
Dawn Prestwich: And, that’s what’s making the difference.
Nicole Yorkin: But, we still have a long way to go. I think, the more women we can get in the business, the more women feel empowered to tell the stories they wanna tell and there are more writers working now.
Dawn Prestwich: I mean, you don’t give up. I have to say that we owe – the idea that somebody would make this piece about Zelda Fitzgerald, who wasn’t the writer, she was only famous because she was married to F. Scott Fitzgerald; she was his muse. That somebody, as in Joe Louis at Amazon, would say, yeah, that is worthy of a television series is amazing. It’s a tribute to him, because we never believed this would go, ever.
Nicole Yorkin: I will say this, that in our career, we have not always chosen material because of its feminist content; but, for instance, The Killing had a very strong woman lead; we worked on that for years. Many of the shows we have worked on have had women, you know that are flawed, because real people are flawed – that’s okay. So, I think feminism is good for everybody.
Dawn Prestwich: That’s right, to bring a strong creative female voice to a story that’s all about men is critical. I mean, that can be the difference between a big success and something that people are just kind of like, eh, ya know?
Nicole Yorkin: I think one show we worked on is called Brotherhood on Showtime, and it was about these two brothers, primarily; one was a politician, one was the head of the Irish mob. The reason – and these guys mom and one of the guys wife, Annabeth Gish, (who were important characters) – but, because we were the only women on the staff, they became actually, I think, much more distinct, specific women because we knew how to write them and visualize them.
Dawn Prestwich: We brought specificity and vision to their characters. They weren’t just the generic classic female.
HCSCADATL: I might have time for one more quick question. What is the role of mistakes in writing?
Dawn Prestwich: Aha! Ya know, the first draft that we ever write, we call the “vomit draft.” And it’s filled with mistakes. You know what you gotta do? You have to just turn off your critical voice that’s in your head and you just have to write the damn thing. And then you go back and read it, and you hate a lot of it. Then, you go, you know what, this is kinda good. I mean, but, I have a hard time, even to this day, probably maybe because it’s been so many years…I’ll have to say to Nicole, you read it first and tell me it’s okay. So, she’ll read the vomit draft and she’ll be like, It’s fine. It’s fine.
Nicole Yorkin: But, I’m sure, you know, all students and all writers know that writing is re-writing. Writing is re-writing. Writing is – can be hell for many people but, you know what, it’s just writing and re-writing, until you get to the point where it’s good enough.
Dawn Prestwich: You don’t learn unless you make mistakes, and sometimes mistakes can lead you down really interesting roads. So, you can’t be afraid to make mistakes, ever.
And there you have it: