HANDLING STORY

Funding Follows Coherence

I work online and in-person with producers, directors, and writers to move beyond plot and character and distill the thematic soul of their work — usually within a single session.

Thematic focus reduces risk across your entire development. Grabbing your story's 'Why' early gives you the strategic language for your Statement of Intent — the pivot point of any funding proposal on which projects either thrive or fail. Without it, your artistic vision is vulnerable to the brutal evolution of development and the scrutiny of funders.

Financing — whether from a national fund in London, a co-production jury in Paris, or a streamer in Los Angeles — follows coherence. To secure your vision, you must be able to articulate not just what happens, but the artistic necessity of why it must be told now, and why by you.

My Method

Most development conversations work by addition — more notes, more drafts, more opinions. This works differently.

When the relationships inside your story exist as objects on a table, you stop defending the story and start reading it. The map lets you interrogate whether your characters and their conflicts are genuinely carrying the thematic tension at the core of your work — or whether the structure is quietly pulling against it.

This is not about play. It is about making the invisible logic of your story visible enough to be tested against your theme.

Theme as Tension, Not Topic

In development circles, we often hear themes reduced to single-word clichés: Hope, Betrayal, Forgiveness. But these are labels, not engines for drama. A single term contains no friction; there is no tension between a thing and itself.

True theme lives in the irresolvable friction between two competing universal values. It is the quiet struggle between Love and Honesty, or the violent collision of Faith and Certainty. These are the tensions that define the human condition. Unlike a dog, who is simply hungry, tired, or happy, we are endlessly complex—thrown between inconsistencies and paradoxes.

When you identify this Universal Tension early, you move from a "message movie" toward a rigorous interrogation of life. This is the antidote to the formulaic. It protects the writer from "on-the-nose" didacticism and ensures the project possesses the thematic coherence required to score highly with expert juries who are weary of the predictable.

Story as Exploration

If the THEME is your inquiry, the STORY is your laboratory. Your narrative is a series of scenarios designed to explore different strategies for surviving that central tension:

The STORY of a woman navigating her roles as head of state and as wife and mother to a dysfunctional family, against the backdrop of significant historical events, explores the THEME - ‘can one retain their sense of self while expected to devote themselves entirely to something else?’ - THE CROWN.

The STORY of a surgeon having to choose the unthinkable, to kill a member of their family to save those remaining, explores the THEME - ‘how do we hold onto logic when faith seems to offer certainty?’ - THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER.

A 13-year-old’s arrest for the fatal stabbing of a classmate, kickstarts a STORY - the minutiae of the arrest, a flailing school investigation, a tense psychological reckoning, and a family shattered by the unimaginable, that explores how teachers, police officers, psychologists and parents struggle with the THEME - ‘can you protect someone when you don’t know what you’re protecting them from?’ - ADOLESENCE.

The Result: A Funder-Ready Vision

I've been told that theme is for critics, not creators — that it should only be discovered in the edit suite. I believe the opposite. Finding your theme too late is the most expensive mistake a producer can make. Scripts without a thematic north star don't just drift — they accumulate. Every unresolved structural decision becomes a cost.

The earlier you can articulate what your story is genuinely wrestling with, the more every subsequent decision — casting, location, tone, structure — has something to answer to.

Whether you have a one-page synopsis or a full script, I align your intent with the high-level scrutiny of a borderless industry. This method has a proven track record across film, TV, and immersive media.