We recently connected with Terry McFadden and have shared our conversation below.
Terry, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?
I’d say about 9 or 10 years old. I would sneak upstairs and watch TV in my Mom and Dad’s room while the rest of the gang was downstairs and watch old TV Reruns. Every Tuesday night this NY Station would show an old Elvis Presley movie and I really got into them. Also, I had very little interest in what the other kids were doing and although I played touch football, wiffle ball and things like that I never really got it. Trying to be Elvis got it.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
Well my “B” Job is as a Script Doctor with my company Story Builders. We are a professional writing service that provides Script Doctoring, Consulting and Coaching for TV Writers and Screenwriters. We are dedicated to helping writers and creators find and hone their own unique and original Voice. My job is to help writers implement their own unique Voice into every aspect of their screenplay or TV show to allow them to give their own fresh take on the material no matter the subject, genre, form or time period.
I truly feel that the writer’s own unique Voice is the most important thing you can bring to the page because it is who you truly are, it is your life experiences–it is how you see the world and it’s issues from a place that is totally your own. I am here to make sure that not only your project sings, is structurally sound, and works as a story but that you are bringing something new to the genre and page that only you, as the writer or creator can.
Some of the main concerns writers have when working with us on their projects are these: “is how I see the world and the situations in this story resonating in the ways I imagined? Is my script different enough from the others that may have similar topics or situations? How is my script going to stand out”? These are the questions my process addresses and fixes.
To do that we help you define: how you are unique in how you see and have experienced life and the POV on the story world; your method of expression; your common topic of exploration (what moves and grooves you); what you center on as a writer; your themes and your personal connection to the material no matter the genre or even time period. Yeah, we get your Voice chirping.
So my “A” job is as a show creator, writer, and actor. I wrote 30 shorts, one act and ten-minute plays; several short and feature screenplays and TV pilots and am co-writer on a pilot that we are shooting just after the new year. And, yeah, I also have all of that listed above. My common topic of exploration is the ways that childhood trauma shows up in our adult lives and I incorporate that in poignant and in humorous ways in my work as an actor and show creator.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
To make tons of money, I mean come on Dude, let’s get honest here. Haha, but also, and even more than that, as I mentioned in my own journey, at the core of all of my creative work I want to bring to the forefront how the effects of childhood trauma affects us as adults through my characters in funny, poignant, and sometimes tragic ways. My mission is to blend the comic, the touching, and the heartbreaking and in an everyday identifiable setting that anyone will relate to as to highlight this issue. I want to bring more awareness to it in ways that are identifiable to everybody.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Well, there have been many as I have been performing as well as in the creative/entertainment field since I was zero years old. However, I will tell you all about the biggest and most scary: This was only a little more than three years ago when I was feeling itchy and agitated about a seeming lack of support I was receiving from a group I was a member of regarding a project I wanted to put up and shoot that I created. So I took a leave from “Story Builders” and any other earning, took my $30,000 dollars in savings, and put it all together. I hired actors, put together and shot this cool talk show over too many months in a cool Los Feliz Studio. Only problem was, I had more show than money toward the end and even though I shot it, the wheels were coming off in all other arenas. I was late on rent and having trouble finding work and then, as in an episode of my show, my own trauma, distress, and depression kicked in and I felt effed. I stayed in a halfway house for two months and then drove across country and stayed at my baby sister’s basement for another two. In and around this time period Covid hit, my Mom died and the best friend I ever had in the world passed away.
So I took a cheap apartment, worked a few odd jobs, and put my business “Story Builder” together in a bigger and better way. But I did not do it alone. A good friend in LA by the name of Chris took me through it as it happened to him, I also got plenty of help from family and I joined up with people and groups who had been through similar—and God popped n as well. Allin all (am I going to say this?) It was a blessing in disguise (how cliché is that?) because coming out of that and feeling supported, I truly feel I went “next level” in my business, my acting work, and my own projects and now this is all I do once again. But wait for it. Through all of this I kept writing, looking for acting work and realizing that without my art I am a goner anyway, so I never dropped my passion for a moment, I simply integrated it for a bit. Anyway, hope that gets it.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.storybuilderswrite.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/terry.mcfadden.18/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/storybuilders/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Storybuilderz
- Other: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1079896/ https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1079896/otherworks?ref_=nm_pdt_wrk_sm http://www.doollee.com/PlaywrightsM/mcfadden-terry.php https://www.storybuilderswrite.com/terrys-own-shows.html https://www.storybuilderswrite.com/pressure-cooker.html