HANDLING STORY

Funding Follows Coherence

I hold online and in-person sessions to help producers, directors, and writers move beyond the surface of plot and character to distill the thematic "soul" of their work, within a single session.

Thematic focus reduces risk through your development. Grabbing your story’s ‘Why’ early provides the strategic language for your Statement of Intent—the pivot point of any funding proposal on which many projects either thrive or fail. I ensure your artistic vision survives the brutal evolution of development and the scrutiny of funders.

In the competitive landscape of global storytelling, the distance between a "good idea" and a "financed project" is often a matter of clarity. 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

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.

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—tossed 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. Discovering your theme too late is the most expensive mistake a producer can make. Without a thematic North Star, scripts succumb to "structural bloat."