We were lucky to catch up with Tyler J. Thompson recently and have shared our conversation below.

Tyler J., looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

For me, the most meaningful project that I worked on was finally putting a collection of my poetry together and publishing my first book, Back to the Garden. I’d say this is the most meaningful because it’s also the most intimate and vulnerable. When I write scripts the stories always have crumbs of me sprinkled throughout in the form of other characters, but my book of poetry is a look directly into my mind and heart. I would vomit out these poems and musings over the past fifteen years right as they came to me, so the entire book is a compilation of my feelings and thoughts as raw and real as I could get them down onto a notebook or my phone notes.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Growing up in a slower-paced Southeast Texas town, where movies were an adventure into the BIG world outside of the small town, I fell in love with storytelling. Juxtapose the small town lifestyle with venturing out and pursuing my dream of writing in the thriving and diverse city of Los Angeles, has given me an array of life experiences that have molded me into the man that I am today. I’m a film & television writer and published author that currently work as a Creative Executive and Lead Writer for a startup; Silver Lining Pictures. My biggest passion in my writing is world building, psychology and creating quirky characters that inevitably take us on a journey toward unity rather than division. I have two TV pilots that earned Quarter Finalist in the Screencraft TV Pilot competition and the Table Read My Screenplay Hollywood competition. In between personal projects and writing assignments, I’ve always had a passion to work with fellow artists of all kinds who have a story they’ve wanted to see come to life in script format. I love being able to collaborate with them from origins of an idea to seeing the final product of a fully fleshed out script. Whether it be a TV pilot or feature film, I have worked with countless artists to help bring their story to life. Some have come to the table with just an idea and others have come with a rough first draft. My job is to help turn that into a tight and polished sellable script. You can check out more on my website www.bytylerjthompson.com

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I believe the biggest driving force in my creative journey is to shine a light on unifying humanity. Storytelling has the ability to showcase different perspectives and different cultures to humans that may never get to actually experience them. I believe this is absolutely crucial for healthy human communities. We need to see different perspectives and different ways of living and utilize these differences to grow together and help each other. In a world that can be extremely divided and divisive, I’ve always had a mission to use my storytelling as a way to brings us all together. Because, in my humble opinion, I believe a united humanity that works together is the way life was meant to be experienced.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

For me, one of the biggest moments of unlearning I had to work through was the idea that being an artist and being business minded was in conflict. When my journey with writing and my voice as a writer really took off was the moment I stopped fighting “the business” side of the industry and actually accepted and embraced it as just another part of the journey. There’s actually something quite freeing when you can see things that were once in conflict as actually something that can beautifully work together. My favorite script that I wrote was after I stopped complaining about how, “all the producers in this town only want to produce IP instead of original ideas”. I actually decided to write a spec pilot based off one of my favorite movies growing up; Willow Directed by Ron Howard and written by George Lucas. I thought it would be awesome to write an origin story to these fun characters that I loved growing up, so I wrote a spec pilot prequel to the movie and it was the most fun I had writing since I started writing. Nothing ever happened with the script, and Disney + ended up making their own version of a TV show version of Willow, but that switch in my mindset brought me back to having fun writing again and finding that perfect marriage of art and business.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.bytylerjthompson.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tyler__j__thompson/
• Other: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm10944721/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_0_nm_8_in_0_q_tyler%2520j.%2520thompson

Image Credits

Ryan Jorgensen. Ariel Payne.