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Start, Finish, or Fix Your Script: Dan Robert on Crafting Stories with Heart & Shape
With Shondaland, I got stupid lucky. I was hired by the legendary Debbie Allen through a theater connection, and the fact that she took me under her wing when I was so green in film and TV is one of the greatest gifts of my life.
by Writing Workshops Staff
9 hours ago
Dan Robert is an Emmy Award-winning writer, director, and occasional actor who was once just a kid learning the ropes of regional theater. It was the sort of environment that instills both earnest dreams and a zany sense of humor, two qualities Dan carried with him all the way to Shondaland and beyond.
After earning his stripes as the executive assistant to Debbie Allen and then Shonda Rhimes on “Grey’s Anatomy,” Dan moved into the writers’ room himself, writing on Netflix’s “The Baby-Sitter’s Club” with a staff that collected an Emmy for their efforts before working on the next installment of “Nine Perfect Strangers.” Today, with a creative portfolio that spans from Broadway Video–produced podcasts to film and TV development deals, Dan is bringing his distinctive blend of industry acumen and warmhearted comedic flair to a new generation of aspiring screenwriters.
In this conversation, we meet Dan at a pivotal moment: he has taken his eclectic experience—childhood acting in local plays (yes, it’s therapy-worthy), writing with longtime friend Lisha Brooks, including star-studded projects with talent like Nicole Kidman, Chloe Fineman, and Joshua Jackson—and fashioned it into a mentorship program for writers eager to find their own voices.
Dan's Start, Finish, or Fix Your Original or Adapted Film/TV Project one-on-one mentorship program is more than just a series of consultations. It’s a creative boot camp tailored to slice through the noise—inner and outer—and turn half-formed ideas into airtight loglines, robust outlines, and fully finished scripts.
A self-confessed fan of “blue skies brainstorming,” Dan sees his mission as equal parts champion and confidant. Throughout the multi-week experience, participants have the rare chance to sit with a working television writer who knows firsthand the tug-of-war between structure and inspiration, as well as the marketplace realities that shape the modern entertainment landscape. It’s a safe, dynamic space to wrestle with the most confounding plot points, refine dialogue into something crackling and purposeful, and—perhaps most importantly—pinpoint that ephemeral kernel of “why” that propels truly urgent storytelling.
For those longing to break into an industry known for high stakes and shifting tides, Dan offers more than just craft guidance—he offers hard-won perspective on forging a creative life. As you’ll see in this interview, he’s open-hearted about the vulnerabilities of the profession, and deeply committed to seeing new voices take root. Whether you have a stack of half-finished scripts tucked away in a drawer or simply a wild premise percolating in your imagination, Dan Robert’s mentorship promises a transformative journey with a partner who knows exactly how to nudge you—and your idea—bravely into the spotlight.
Writing Workshops: From western Massachusetts to Shondaland—what surprised you the most about transitioning to Hollywood, and how do you use those lessons to guide mentees trying to break into the industry?
Dan Robert: I never thought I would end up in Los Angeles, no less working in TV. Growing up in the northeast I was hellbent, like almost clinically desperate, on landing in New York City. As a theater kid the end all be all was to become a Broadway actor. But when I went to Emerson College to study acting, suddenly I looked around and all my friends were film kids. Emerson has a Los Angeles program, which I did for my last semester, and I completely fell in love with LA. I’d pretty much followed my friends from Boston because I had attachment and abandonment issues (us aging millennials called this FOMO) and here I still am a decade later, working in this industry that used to feel so abstract and unobtainable.
So really, the surprise and lesson is that there is no obvious prerequisite to working in this town. No film degree you have to show up with or special permission slip or knighting ceremony that happens. You just make this decision to jump off the cliff, fueled by an insane self-belief that you belong, and then you just try to stumble your way into the right rooms.
With Shondaland I got stupid lucky. I was hired by the legendary Debbie Allen through a theater connection, and the fact that she took me under her wing when I was so green in film and TV is one of the greatest gifts of my life. But there’s that piece of wisdom I really believe in that goes something like “luck favors the prepared.” I grew up on Grey’s Anatomy -- like I had the board game and the DVD box sets and the wall calendar -- and as a superfan, every single day at work on that set I thought someone was going to come up to me and be like: “Um, sorry, sir? You can’t be here. You reek of obsession, it’s actively dripping off of you, and it’s making the actors uncomfortable.”
But somehow that never happened, and it turned out my love for the stories I grew up watching was enough to motivate me to teach myself how to write them myself. I believe that’s true of anyone who comes to film and TV as a fan first who’s willing to put in the work, roll up their sleeves, and make some messes before they get to the good stuff.
WW: Your mentorship emphasizes finding the ‘heart and shape’ of a story. Can you walk us through what that discovery process looks like and why it’s vital to a script’s success?
DR: I heard someone explain recently the difference between “concept” and “premise” by saying: your concept is the stone and your premise is the statue. One is substance, the other is form. When I say the “heart” and the “shape” of a story, I think I’m saying something similar: the heart is the living, tender center of a story and the shape is its bones, its body.
One way to find the heart of a story is by forming a question that’s big and messy and really hard to answer, or that can be answered in a million different ways. And all the different possible answers, and the hero we create who needs those answers to survive, those are the things that keep a story alive and in motion. Without a heart your story has no pulse. You’ll grow bored of it, or lose sight of it, and so will your audience. So in a way, we also want the heart to be the thing we love most about our story -- the thing that keeps us tethered to it for as long as it takes to write it, fix it, make it and remake it.
And that can be a disturbingly long time. Shape is a little easier to describe. It’s the beginning, middle, and end. Three acts. It’s the basic structure we need to get writing. Because without a shape we’re just bleeding all over the floor. Shape is the framework, the skeleton of a story, that the heart animates into motion. Both rely on each other. Once you have both, you’re off to the races.
WW: You have a special interest in adaptations. In your experience, what’s the biggest hurdle for writers adapting their own novels or short stories for the screen, and how do you help them overcome it?
DR: I think as writers we have to learn not to become too precious about our writing, especially in revision. We all know -- or will have to find out sooner or later -- that any word, sentence, joke, scene, character or entire arc can fall victim to the ruthlessness of clearing away whatever is not in service of the best possible version of a story. In some ways adaptation is like the ultimate revision.
And because of that, this brutal task of clearing away or fundamentally changing precious parts of our stories can be more intense when we’re jumping mediums. Because the best possible version of a novel can’t be the best possible version of a movie or TV show. They should share a heart, but it would be physiologically impossible for them to share a shape.
That’s not to say that a close or loyal adaptation can’t work, it’s just that you have to be open-minded going into adaptation -- especially when we are author and adapter both. It takes an almost spiritual approach of intuiting what will capture the spirit of the material you’re adapting while making sure it works on its feet.
Novels by design are internal, they’re paced differently, so adapting one might require expansion in some places (e.g. more or new characters to externalize the story through dialogue) or huge swaths cut or condensed for time. So we do this sort of surgery with a lot of patience and care. There’s bound to be some internal conflict when you’re the creator of both stories, so we try to mediate between the prose writer and screenwriter within you without losing the plot -- literally and figuratively.
WW: Your program promises accountability and ‘championship in all its forms.’ Can you share a moment when you found yourself ‘cheering’ a mentee through a difficult creative block—and how that breakthrough shaped their final script?
DR: I’ve just seen so many brilliant, creative people come into writing mentorship or workshops thinking they know absolutely nothing. They’re super self-effacing and think they’re so far off from understanding this type of storytelling or think their idea sucks. Then lo and behold, day one they start pitching me a wonderful, rich, totally workable concept that is juicy and funny and smart and original. I work with a lot of actors and other creatives who are writing-adjacent and want to try writing, and you’d be surprised how much we pick up by osmosis. I started as an actor, too.
Certainly there are craft skills to teach and everyone is always learning how to get better at breaking story and optimizing structure and all that more technical stuff. But I find actors especially have a preternaturally strong grasp on character. Or someone will have this incredible lived experience: a bizarre, super specific job they did in their 20s that they think would make a cool world for a TV show, or a fucked up relationship dynamic they’ve survived and want to narrativize for a movie. And they’ll be like: Is this something? This isn’t anything, is it? And usually it's a resounding YES. It absolutely is something.
So we just look for those yeses, and nine out of ten times we get one on the first day. Then the work is just about getting out of our own way and finding the right shape and engine for a story that turns these ideas into high functioning premises with some craft lessons sprinkled in.
WW: What’s one common mistake you see new screenwriters make—whether they’re drafting an original pilot or adapting existing material—and how do you coach them through correcting it?
DR: One thing that sounds simple but took me a really long time to grasp is keeping characters as active as possible. And it sounds like: um, duh? But you’d be surprised how often we set out to craft a story -- especially a TV pilot story -- and scene after scene after scene is just stuff happening to our protagonist. And I get why.
A lot of times the seed of an idea comes from the thing that happens. That’s a perfectly fine place to start! But what we really care about is what our characters choose to do about it. We want to watch characters who are architects of their own demise or who dig themselves out of holes despite all odds. So they need to make choices. And fast!
The first red flag I usually find when I look at a new story is that a bunch of stuff is just happening instead of choices getting made. Or choices don’t get made until way too late in the story. It’s so easy to slip into this, and it’s also not the hardest thing to fix once you spot it. It can also be a sign that we’ve started breaking story before we know what our protagonist truly wants.
So lots of times we have to zoom out and go back to remind ourselves what’s driving all that action. Because the other annoying thing is: all those choices our heroes make have to make story sense and have to build off each other.
WW: You help writers create voice-forward, bold stories only they can tell. Why is cultivating that distinctive, personal voice so crucial in today’s entertainment industry, and how do you help mentees tap into it?
DR: This is a great question because I think people misunderstand this sometimes and get hung up on the tyranny of originality. We often get stuck because we feel like we have to completely reinvent the wheel. And I totally get why that would be, with people like me running around using splashy language like: “let’s help you write a story only you can tell.” It almost sounds like a threat! The truth is there are only so many stories at the end of the day. Story shapes, I mean.
So the stories we tell are allowed to be familiar. Honestly, the more I write, the more I beg myself to keep the story simple. As writers we love to fly off the rails in the name of originality, trying to prove we can invent something totally new -- but really we’re just making chaos. What we’re really trying to grasp and master is POV and voice. The “why” and “how” of our story. The why is where we get a writer’s point of view. The why should always be as personal as possible.
The how is where voice comes into play. When I teach writing action lines, for example, I tell people to jot them down as if they’re explaining what’s happening to their best friend who’s in a hurry. That exact exercise might not feel right for everyone or unlock their unique voice, but the idea is: we’re trying to tap into this totally freed up, urgent, almost audacious way of showing up on the page. Because it is a crowded industry, and there are only so many stories to tell and retell.
So it’s the how and why that will help cut through the noise and keep a distracted, oversaturated reader or viewer invested and excited.
Learn more about Dan's upcoming one-on-one mentorship and apply now!
Instructor Dan Robert is an Emmy Award-winning writer/director/actor who grew up in western Massachusetts “where the coffee is strong, the women are stronger, and the first hour of parking is always free.” He started his career as a child actor in local professional theater, for which therapy has been very helpful. After graduating from Emerson College, he began working at Shondaland, where he served as the executive assistant to Debbie Allen on “Grey’s Anatomy” before becoming the creative assistant to Shonda Rhimes. With his high school best friend and writing partner, Lisha Brooks, he wrote on both seasons of “The Baby-Sitter’s Club” for Netflix, which won the 2022 Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Live Action Preschool or Children’s Program. They were co-producers and writers on the forthcoming second installment of “Nine Perfect Strangers” starring Nicole Kidman for Hulu. Dan is the creator and director of the Broadway Video (SNL) produced Audible original scripted podcast “Excessive” starring Chloe Fineman and Joshua Jackson. With Lisha, he co-created and stars in the web series “Beards” which has played in festivals around the world and the short film “I Love Lisha” which was optioned by 20th Television. They have various forthcoming projects in development in both television and film with studios like Fifth Season and production companies like Playtone. As an actor, Dan has appeared on “Search Party” and “Made for Love.” He is repped by 3Arts.
