Ken Atchity received his undergraduate degree from Georgetown University and his graduate degree from Yale. He received the Porter Prize for his dissertation titled "Homer’s Iliad: The Song and Shield of Memory." Atchity was professor of comparative literature, creative writing, and journalism at Occidental College and at UCLA Writers Program. He has received scholarly grants from American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Mellon Foundation and he has written for scholarly journals throughout the world. He was also Fulbright Professor of American Studies in Bologna, Italy.

Atchity has made numerous radio and television appearances and now gives lectures, seminars, and workshops around the United States and Europe. He’s written twelve books.

Ken Atchity is chairman and CEO of AEI, Atchity Entertainment International, Inc., a management service for writers. AEI is a management/production company whose credits include "Life Or Something Like It" and "Joe Somebody." For additional information about Atchity and AEI click here http://www.aeionline.com/. (August 2003)


I'm intimidated by your credentials. You truly are a literary Renaissance man. If anyone would have an affinity for the written word, you do. Your childhood was spent in Kansas City, Missouri but I've also read that you are a half Cajun Louisiana native.

I split my growing up years between the two places, spending summers in Louisiana fishing and working in rice fields, and the rest of the year in Kansas City working and going to school.

And you were awarded an Ignatian Scholarship to Georgetown University. How did your interest in writing develop?

My mother was my chief inspiration, along with her Louisiana family of storytellers and joke-tellers. Sitting on the porch spinning yarns is what my French family loved to do -- and I fell in love with everything about storytelling, especially how it makes people feel and their need for it. My education was all about learning to read the world's greatest storytellers in their original language, starting with Greek for Homer and Latin for Virgil, then moving on to Italian for Dante, French for Rabelais, and Spanish for Cervantes and the Latin American novelists.

I'm really intrigued that you encourage writers to develop a solid treatment before diving into the pages. Many advice-givers tell novice writers not to do that but what you said made sense to me, that one should make sure your story works before getting all excited and generating pages.

We think the treatment is absolutely essential. It's a very efficient way to see story holes, and to deal with them without the emotional investment that naturally occurs if you've already finished the entire manuscript.

Obviously you think the treatment is important. One of the twelve books you wrote or co-wrote was Writing Treatments that Sell, written with Chi-Li Wong. Another book that might be of interest to our readers is A Writer's Time: A Guide to the Creative Process. This would be helpful to any type of writer, correct?

Right. The book really tells you how to manage your time, but it's also an overview of the creative process as I studied it in successful and well-adjusted writers during the years I co-edited the magazine Dreamworks, which was about the way successful storytellers integrate all the parts of their minds.

And you've produced many movies for both TV and theater. Life, or Something Like It (2001) and Joe Somebody. How did those come about and what attracted you to those concepts?

We were attracted because John Scott Shepherd was our client. Once we have a client and we like the first couple of stories, then we go on to developing those stories with them. "Life" was based on the "what if" that someone finds out she has only a week to live -- how would she spend that week, and how would her former goals change to integrate with her fate. "Joe" was originally a dark comedy about a down-and-out man who gets bitched-slapped in a parking lot and suddenly has to ask himself what it takes to be a man again, and whether he can handle it.

You also led a seminar recently "Finding an Agent and Getting Published: It's an Art Form." Why is marketing an art form and not a business form?

It's an art form because it involves presentation. It's not just a cut-and-dried situation. You have to use common sense and combine it with your instinct. And your instinct has got to apply not only to your work but to finding a person with the passion and persistence to present it to the ever-more-difficult and competitive story marketplace.

And the workshop went well?

It went very well. It's always very satisfying to be able to answer questions and to make aspiring writers realize that the people on the other side of the desk are just people who respond well to being treated like people instead of like intimidating icons -- I hate being thought of as intimidating, by the way. If you tasted my gumbo, you wouldn't think I was intimidating.

I’d love to try the gumbo. My mom makes homemade gumbo for Christmas Eve. You've also been busy with other seminars as well. From the newsletter, it looks as if you've recently been in Florida. Tell me more about those.

I visit South Florida often because it's a seedbed of creativity and receptivity -- creative people who are willing to listen to what it takes to succeed and to put their time, spirits, and money behind their creative drive.

What prompted you to create AEI? You seem to be focusing on developing writers because they were either doing things badly or falling through the cracks.

I would put it differently. What we're really trying to develop are storytellers. We try to turn storytellers into novelists, and screenwriters, and for other media. We're not looking to develop novelists or screenwriters, we're looking to develop storytellers into writers. There are basically two types of storytellers. We have two companies because there are two functions needed. We need to find stories that are ready to represent; that's what AEI does. And then we sell them or produce them.

I realized after working at AEI for a couple of years that we needed to help storytellers get their stories ready for representation, which is why we started http://www.thewriterslifeline.com/.

So one company sells stories that are ready to represent; the other one makes stories ready to represent. In the second category, it's a question of getting your script crafted and skilled to the level of your talent and ambition. That's what the Writers’ Lifeline does. In some cases, it does that by mentoring writers or sometimes by actually doing the writing for them. We may write a treatment for a businessman or a doctor, someone who has a story to tell. I'm in New York this week meeting with different people who want us to write treatments for them. A man just flew from the Midwest to have us write a treatment for him about the relationship he had with his father. We're simply doing the treatment for him. He doesn't want to become a writer, he just has a great story to tell, and we helped him tell it.

When storytellers want to become writers, we need to make sure they develop the skill and craft to develop for the commercial market. We put him with a group of mentors until he gets to that point.

That's why we started the Writers’ Lifeline. Many people get turned down as screenwriters but no one tells them why, their work just get passed on. They have great ideas but they're still going to get passed on until their screenplay looks like what people want to buy. People can pay a lot of money for screenplays and they want them to have perfect content and perfect castability, but we realized that it's an arduous road for the inexperienced storyteller to becoming a professionally polished screenwriter -- primarily because no one in the professional world serves as mentor in the way it's done in the academic world. Too many people teaching screenwriting aren't dealing with the realities of the marketplace, so a service based on marketplace realities seemed like a natural idea -- and it's now found its niche.

Once we have a storyteller perfected and "ready for prime time" through The Writer's Lifeline, AEI tries to represent him in every possible media. A screenwriter, we help develop into a novelist. And in one case, someone we're talking with, into a Broadway playwright. We believe a storyteller has the right and should be urged to tell his stories in every medium that pays money. Stories are so precious in today's world that we want to exploit the potential for each writer because money buys the freedom.

I receive the Writers’ Lifeline newsletter each morning. It's a wonderful tool for writers with the quotes, the contest deadlines, and the technical tips. You also promote your writers very well.

We try, and are working on doing even more through expanding our financial base for development and production. It's really about cross-promotion, thinking outside the box. We have one writer, novelist Steve Alten, heading an Adopt-an-Author program that's now in several thousand high schools. More information is available at www.AdoptAnAuthor.com That's one more way we've found to get the stories out.

Anyone who would like to sign up for the free daily newsletter may do so by sending an email to subscribe@thewriterslifeline.com or by visiting http://www.thewriterslifeline.com/ How do you solicit and accept queries and stories?

The website, www.aeionline.com, tells you how to approach us. We don't mind being approached by e-mail. If the writer gives a good approach, he's going to get a response in a fairly quick time. We're very open and like to be approached initially with a short, two sentences or so line. Then we can decide if it's something we want to see more of. If we're interested and the writer follows our instructions, we'll ask for more until eventually perhaps we'll see the whole thing. Make sure you've registered your work properly before submitting -- our website tells you how to do that as well.

And AEI has managers in Houston, Boston, Miami, New York, Honolulu, as well as Moscow, London, Buenos Aires, Seoul, Manila, Toronto, Tokyo, and other cities.

We try to cast our net as widely as possible, in the search for great stories that may find global audiences.

In your opinion, what are necessary components of a story that will make it to print or film?

A contemporary hero involved in a dilemma, suddenly thrust into a dilemma, a situation he doesn't deserve -- and who undergoes major change in moving to solve that dilemma. The action of the rest of the film is closely derived from that. Whether a drama, a thriller, or a love story, that's what we're looking for, a character-based drama. Stories for the mainstream markets need to be castable -- meaning that a lead actor or actress will want to play the main character. When you find the part that a director and an actor can care about, that's when you can jump into Hollywood. We're looking for distinctive voices, personality, and especially minority men and women writers with stories that mainstream audiences can relate to.

If someone wants to be a screenwriter, he should read every screenplay he can get his hands on.

The best advice given to me was to stop reading amateur screenplays for a while and read screenplays that have been or will be produced.

Short of having a personal mentor, reading great screenplays is the best school you can attend.

I read in another interview that you said talent is the last thing you need. A good idea, persistence, personality, and access can make a career. Is that correct?

I said that "talent" is not sufficient in itself, whereas persistence, contacts, and personality are each sufficient. IF you have any one of them, and talent, you're going to be in demand!

What fatal mistakes do writers make?

The biggest mistake writers make regularly is giving up. Persistence is the primary virtue required for storytellers trying to break into the commercial story marketplace.