I'm 24 and have 3 writing credits: Here's how.
By Jackie Logsted, Screenwriter
When I was 18 and decided I wanted to pursue a career as a writer/director, I expected it to take at least ten years to land my first gig. Filmmaking wasn’t a job you could get straight out of college—who would trust a 22-year-old kid with writing or directing a movie? So I prepared to start as an assistant at an agency or production company and work my way up the corporate ladder until someone gave me a shot.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that there were opportunities to work professionally as a writer at 22; they just didn’t look the way I’d imagined.
The summer before my senior year of college, I landed an internship with MarVista Entertainment, a production company specializing in TV thrillers, rom-coms, and holiday films for Tubi, Hallmark, and Lifetime, among other networks. I worked under a Development and Production Executive, learning how the company developed films: executives came up with ideas, pitched them to distributors, and then hired writers to execute the scripts.
I was fascinated by this process. After a summer of working closely with my boss and developing a strong working relationship, I asked her how their company hires writers. She told me they hire people they know and then work with them repeatedly. I reminded her that she knew me! She laughed and said I could email her a sample of my work. Thankfully, I had been writing nonstop for the four years prior, ensuring I had solid scripts to send out. I fired off my strongest sample with fingers crossed... but I didn’t hear back from her.
I accepted that it wasn’t going to happen, and that was okay. I was starting my senior year of college and had plenty of time to keep honing my skills and land my first professional opportunity. But then, six months later, I got an email from my old boss asking how free I was. I, of course, told her I could be as free as she needed and asked what she needed.
She told me they had a finished outline for a script that another writer had stepped away from at the last minute and thought I’d be a good fit for the project. It was a thriller about college girls, and since I was a college girl, she figured I might bring some authenticity to the story. I immediately said yes. I spent the rest of my spring semester going to class during the day and writing the script at night. By the time I graduated, I had already written my first professional script, all because my former boss decided to take a chance on me.
When my boss said that MarVista likes to work with the same writers repeatedly, she wasn’t lying. They hired me to write a second script that fall and a third script the next year. Now I’m 24 years old and have three writing credits as a writer-for-hire.
These are short-term assignments with incredibly tight turnarounds and don’t fill up a full-time, 52-week-per-year schedule. So, I decided to take on a virtual freelance assisting gig for an independent filmmaker to have income between writing gigs. Through this job, I gain more insight into the daily life of an independent filmmaker and how she works to get her original scripts produced—something I still aspire to do.
When I was 18 and decided I wanted to pursue a career as a writer/director, I had never considered that you could get your start as a writer-for-hire or a virtual assistant.
When I imagined getting my first writing credits, I pictured getting staffed on a network television show or selling an original feature to a big production company. But writer-for-hire work on low-budget films is a much more accessible way for writers to break into the industry. Writing for TV movies is a great way to get early writing credits because they take more chances on unknown writers, but in my experience, most aspiring writers don’t even know those opportunities exist. I certainly didn’t.
Additionally, freelance virtual assistant work offers much more flexibility to pursue creative projects than traditional in-office assistant positions and could be a more advantageous option for other early-career professionals like me. Yet, we often think we need to start at an agency to have any success.
I still have a long way to go to get where I want to be. While writing TV thrillers on assignment is incredibly fun and has been a great way to add credits to my resume, my dream is to write and direct my own original concepts. But landing this gig and getting writing credits on my resume at such a young age has been an incredible step toward achieving that dream. I wish other people knew about this path, too.
The point of the story is: there is no “right way” to pursue a career in the entertainment industry. Keep your eyes open for alternate early-career options that can bring you closer to your dreams— you never know who might be willing to take a chance on you.
You can check out my work here: https://www.jackielogsted.com/ and watch my latest film here: https://tubitv.com/movies/100021724/what-happens-in-miami
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