Hey everyone, welcome back to the screenwriting life. I'm Meg Lafour.

And I'm Lorian McKenna. And today we're welcoming one of my mentors, Octavio Solis. And I met Octavio when he was one of my mentors, Octavia Solis, and I met Octavia when he was one of my guest

professors during my MFA playwriting program and he has very much influenced how I approach

character and language and how I teach and work with other writers.

Author of over 20 plays, Octavio is one of America's prominent Latino playwrights.

His work, which both draws on and transcends the Mexican-American experience, has earned

him dozens of awards and fellowships, including United States Artist Fellowship.

And Octavio is joining us today to discuss the art of playwriting from both a craft and career perspective as well as his experience in film.

Welcome to the show.

Thank you ladies. It's such a pleasure to be here. I'm at your disposal.

Ask me anything you wish.

All right, well, the first thing we're going to ask you

is our first segment is called Adventures in Screenwriting

or How Was Your Week?

So we're going to ask you about your week. We will let Lorian go first. Lorian, how was your week so we're going to ask you about your week we will let

Lorian go first lorian how was your week my week was good enough I found out

that over the weekend the Children's and Family Emmys happened and tab time won an

Emmy for a best host. So I am very very excited for Tabitha Brown for winning that award and for everyone who worked on the show so that's just really exciting for me.

In terms of my writing I am trying something new where I started a feature idea.

Yes, I know, I'm supposed to be working on all these TV ideas,

but a concept came to me.

So I started digging into it, and I want there to be this character who dies. It's about grief and loss. So I got my six pillars out and before I started to dig into it like I usually do from a character perspective and all those other things to free writing. I was like, I'm going to do this like outline organized and I was like, you know, what are the six pillars? Once upon a time there was a and then the inciting incident break it act two midpoint bottom of act two

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