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What I learned while making a TV pilot

Nov 26, 2014
5 min

What I learned while making a TV pilot

Paul Mooney As someone who spent four years as an officer in the Marines, I'm no stranger to large, complex operations. Weeks, months even, of hard work comprised of long, slow periods of planning punctuated by intense moments of stress that can last for days. Since leaving the service I’ve thankfully not encountered similar situations, but the last few months I've spent producing a TV pilot I wrote has come extremely close. While this particular task is by no means a commonl

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From the Big Screen to the Conference Table

Nov 5, 2014
4 min

From the Big Screen to the Conference Table

Paul Mooney A screenplay probably looks like a strange piece of work from the perspective of someone unfamiliar with how scripts are written. The text is in widely-spaced blocks of varying widths, some words and lines are in all capital letters, and most of the pages look pretty sparse compared to the average essay or book. But screenplays are actually written with some very simple and specific objectives in mind that are applicable in any form of writing. Every word has purp

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Literary Lessons: The positive Catch-22 of characters in business

Oct 16, 2014
4 min

Literary Lessons: The positive Catch-22 of characters in business

- Elana Duffy My favorite book is Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. Between the sardonic humor, sarcasm, and - however ridiculous the book may seem - truisms of military life, it has captured my attention time and again. It is different; it emulates none of the other stories of its time, and continues to challenge me as a reader to notice something new with each reading. Not to mention its accuracies that apply to other aspects of life, such as business. Having left the military and

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Music Lessons. Or, how to not bore your audience

Sep 19, 2014
5 min

Music Lessons. Or, how to not bore your audience

- Elana Duffy Understanding what makes a band sync well together on stage has nothing to do with the style of music, in the same way that understanding what will best build your teams and put your best story before your customers has nothing to do with what you are building. Good business is an art form, and one that follows the same general rules of consonance and dissonance that make sculpture or novels or a concerto pleasing. Allowing your customers and employees to get lo

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What's In a Story?

Aug 11, 2014
3 min

What's In a Story?

All great stories share the same components and follow the same guiding principles that allow us to communicate. This makes the story – regardless of language, purpose, or topic – one of the best methods of communication. You can hardly make it through a workday without someone encouraging you to “tell a story” or “become a better storyteller”, even if those aren’t their exact words. They are asking for clarification, to understand the topic at hand, and you have to be able

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