WRITTEN BY WRITERS GUILD OF AMERICA WEST
OCT 2025 | LISA ROSEN

Using Art to Write

WGAW members draw on drawing—and collaging, doodling, photography and dancing—to enliven their work.

WGAW members who employ other art forms while writing find it enriches their stories in surprising ways. We’re not just talking about such writers as Guillermo del Toro, whose journals are filled with extraordinary renderings of the monsters that have gone on to populate his films. The art can be rudimentary, while revealing new depths of meaning to the one doing the drawing.

Gallery visitors viewing artwork
MARIE CLAIRE
SEPTEMBER 2013 | LAUREN SANDLER

She's behind many of the films you've loved over the past 15 years – so why haven't you heard of Joan Scheckel? Lauren Sandler gets in on the act.

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THE CALIFORNIA SUNDAY MAGAZINE
MAY 2015 | Starlee Kine

Scenes with Joan Scheckel - Teaching directors to direct

On a recent afternoon in Los Angeles, a movie director was having trouble accessing her inner life. She was rehearsing a scene from her first feature film.

NY OBSERVER
May 2015 | Drew Grant
Play As Work: TRANSPARENT Guru Joan Scheckel Brings Technique to NY

“Joan Scheckel is a bit of a witch,” confided actor Josh Radnor when I told him my plan about shedding all my earthly goods and spending the rest of my life learning at the feet of the Technique’s creator. It’s not that I’m a hippie-dippie person (though L.A. will do that to you in half a second if you give it a chance) but Joan Scheckel, guru to TRANSPARENT creator Joey Soloway, does have an otherworldly quality about her.

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Joan Scheckel in Soho. (Photo by Ben Zucker)

FILM INDEPENDENT
MARCH 2015 | Jennifer Kushner
I’ve known about Joan Scheckel for years. Or so I thought. But I had never actually experienced her Technique until this month.
BLUR + SHARPEN
JANUARY 2014 | HOLLY WILLIS
Joan Scheckel and I are working on a book that will capture the techniques she teaches to filmmakers and writers. This week, we’re working through the chapter on the theme, or what Joan calls the nugget, and I’ve been struggling over the weekend to capture how the nugget can really be considered a theme – the theme as a combination of feeling and doing.
FILMMAKER MAGAZINE
OCTOBER 2013 | HOLLY WILLIS
Primal Direction
Meaning. The craving for meaning. Art and its ability to create experiences of meaning. Whether they seem all too prosaic or winsomely sincere, these words nevertheless constitute the unabashed core of an intensive, 17-session filmmaking lab series housed in a large, high-ceilinged studio in Hollywood and led by an impassioned woman named Joan Scheckel.
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INDIEWIRE
OCTOBER 2014 | Valentina I. Valentini

Shooting 'Transparent': From Rehearsal to Lenses to Intimate Family Drama

“Jill asked me to join her and the cast at rehearsals with indie filmmaking guru and consulting producer Joan Scheckel. The time spent was not about running scenes, but about exploring character, relationship and emotion — all with music and through movement. Jill or Joan would call out specific actions: ‘Go to the person who you feel most connected to, or least connected to,’ for example. And while I had my still camera there to document moments for possible reference, I was participating as fully as the actors were. That’s a treasure for a DP. And it was fantastic.” ~ JIM FROHNA