Does he know what the writer’s block is? No.

His writing routine? He’s an early bird, and stops by 2 or 3 pm. Every day.

He wrote TV, movie, game show, books. And he created Peaky Blinders, adapted from his parents childhood memories.

Just wow.

Steven Knight is fun and entertaining, the kind of authors who makes you feel it’s easy to succeed, just be yourself.

That was my first time surrounded by US screenwriters. I was impressed to be there, in L.A., listening to a British author about a show aired on the BBC. Quite international.

I appreciated the talk, of course, and the audience too : a bit more diverse than what I saw in France, easy going, lively, talking about the industry but not only. (I overheard some conversations.)

To introduce the talk, the speaker Dominic Patten (who was witty and dynamic an knew his job) quoted the Peaky Blinders : « you break the law, but obey the rule ». This seems to relate also to Steven Knight way of doing things.

S. Knight pointed out the uniformisation of movie writing – due to high financial stakes. That’s why he prefers TV series, and also because you can get a character unsympathetic so much longer on a TV show (it’s so much more like life, more real when the hero is deeply flawed.) An interesting character is one that does bad things for a good reason.

On how to write a great scene, he advices us to start far from the result we expect : like, in a love scene, have one of the characters sit on a chair that breaks at the beginning. And see where it goes from there. At the end, you may cut the part with the chair.

M. Knight says he cannot watch again his movies, he reveals hating everything he’s done so far except from TV stuff. And he has no time to spend watching many other things, he’s way too busy with his kids and own writing.

He’s happy working with the BBC which basically let him do whatever he wants and does not handle numerous notes to him. He distrusts notes in general, they are written by people who try to justify their paycheck, and are based on what’s already been done.

To him, anything is good provided it works. And he refers to John Wayne movies as what made him want to do cinema.

You can find his own words on another occasion here.