Tate Taylor, screenwriter and director on The Help, was good friends with kathryn stockett, author of the novel. She gave him the movie rights while she sought a publisher. Adapting the story before it had a fan base helped his process. Then when the book became a bestseller, the phone began to ring. He’d only directed a short film and an indie feature before, so when he told interested parties, including Viola Davis, that in order to option the script they had to bring him on as Director, he was met with some skepticism. Finally Stacey Snider at DreamWorks said, “Yes.” Taylor turned out to be the perfect director because he’d grown up in Jackson, Mississippi, where the film is set, and knew how things work in the South. Octavia Spencer, who plays “Minny Jackson”, is another good friend of Taylor’s and he had her in mind when he wrote the part.

Will Reiser also relied on a close friend in order to make 50/50. Seth Rogen, a good buddy and former roomy of Reiser’s, produced and played the part of “Kyle”. In the film “Adam”, a 27-year-old journalist, discovers he has a rare form of cancer and even with chemotherapy he only has a fifty-fifty chance of surviving. “The original title was ‘What I didn’t learn from Cancer,’” Reiser said. The story is drawn closely from Reiser’s own experiences fighting the disease. He claimed the writing process wasn’t really therapeutic but helped him process his thoughts. Reiser’s friends tell him that Joseph Gordon-Levitt does a spot on imitation of him even though he tried hard to make Adam his own character.

Mike Mills had a similar challenge when he wrote Beginners. When he asked the audience how many of them had known his father Paul, a smattering of hands went up. Paul Mills was the director of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and ‘came out of the closet’ at age 75. The story in Beginners has an autobiographical element in that the father character “Hal Fields” is a gay man who comes out late in life. “I’m not sure how real ‘real’ is,” Mills said. When writing from his parents’ perspective he drew upon memories of conversations in order to infuse the dialogue with emotion. Mills got pretty deep in his explanation of his process which got him a round of applause. “Wow, that made it sound like I had a plan,” he mused.

JC Chandor used what he’d learned from his father when he wrote Margin Call. Chandor waited until the right time to tell his father, who worked at Merrill, Lynch, about the film that revolves around the key people at a investment bank. As Director as well as writer on the movie Chandor’s biggest challenge was finding a balance between creating art and arranging all the moving parts of the feature, like casting. Jeremy Irons was a last minute choice for the part of “John Tuld”. Irons’ work visa was due to expire right before July 4. Chandor panicked, thinking they didn’t have enough time to shoot all of Irons’ scenes. He ended up cutting nine scenes into five. Another casting change was when they got Zachary Quinto when he left The Descendants.

Jim Rash who worked on the screenplay for The Descendants bemoaned the loss of Quinto to Margin Call, but respected George Clooney portrayal of “Matt King”. “Clooney brought himself into the part, “ Rash said. The writing team on The Descendants, which was based on a Novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings, put their own spin on the characters. Like Taylor and The Help, Rash faced the task of adapting a book for the big screen. Rash’s hard work paid off and earned him an Oscar Nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.

When asked which is my favorite social networking site I can’t choose. Facebook offers photo albums, videos viewable in the news feed, and connections to old friends and family. Twitter gives me short bursts of information from many different directions. LinkedIn links me to the business community. YouTube provides videos on just about anything you want to learn. If I had to make a choice, I’d say LinkedIn just because it supplies me with something very important – traffic to my website.

According to my Google Analytics last month my website got three referrals each from Facebook and Twitter. It got 25 referrals from LinkedIn. How did I make that happen? I learned how to use LinkedIn to my advantage. Here are some tips to help you use it to your benefit.

Add as much to your profile as you possible can. Look at other people’s profiles to get ideas and see what works best. While writing your Summary and Specialties remember to use keywords. I tried using my one sentence mission statement as my headline but found it to be too vague and changed my headline to words that describe what I do in my business.

List as many positions as you can, both paid and volunteer. In the Description, don’t just talk about the duties you had, discuss the goals you accomplished.

Be sure to include your website and other links. When they give you the dropdown menu to choose if it’s a “Company Website,” “Blog,” etc., select “Other” because then they let you write a title for the link which looks a lot cooler. If you only have one website, you can use the other two listings for your YouTube channel or whatever profiles you’d like.

They already provide a specific field for your Twitter name. LinkedIn and Twitter work excellent together. I don’t recommend linking your Twitter feed to your Facebook, but I do advice having your tweets go to your LinkedIn page.

LinkedIn has some other functions especially nice for writers. They have a place for you to note your Publications with the title, date, and website. If you have books for sale on Amazon, add the Reading List by Amazon application, then put your books on the list so people will see the cover images on your profile. Explore the Add Applications section for more tools. If you have a WordPress blog, you can have it feed directly into your LinkedIn profile.

One of the best reasons to be on LinkedIn is for the groups. Search for groups having to do with organizations you belong to, your local area, or your favorite activities. Or start your own group. As soon as I’m a member of a group, I go under the More tab and change my settings so the delivery frequency of email digests is weekly. Some groups don’t mind you posting self-promotional material, others do mind. That’s okay because you can still post other people’s links of value. Your name and photo will still be seen in the group activity feed. Don’t forget to respond to posts as well. Another good way to interact in groups is to post a question.

In the top LinkedIn menu, not the submenu in the groups, under More, is an option called Answers. This is an additional area where you can ask questions. By answering questions in this forum, you can demonstrate your expertise.

If you give your potential readers, publishers, agents, and fans something of value they will come. So no matter how much you enjoy hanging out on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, don’t forget LinkedIn as an important leg on your author platform.