A Friendly Chat: Stephen J. Cannell, Novelist, Co-Creator of ’21 Jump Street’ And ‘The A-Team’

Stephen J. Cannell is the creator of 40 television shows, including 21 Jump Street, The Rockford Files, The A-Team, and The Commish. “The hardest work of writing a book or a screenplay is plotting it, and I think that’s why so many writers choose not to do it. Because you sit there and you scratch your head and think, what am I going to do next? What’s the complication at the top of act two, how do I make the story more devastating than it appeared at the beginning, what are my adversaries doing, what’s their move, how do I keep them in motion instead of standing still, waiting to be caught.”

Source: The Awl
Published: Jun 24, 2009
Length: 7 minutes (1,825 words)
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