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The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience

How Screenwriter and ‘All Our Wrong Todays’ Author Elan Mastai Writes: Part One

35 min • 24 januari 2017

The award-winning screenwriter and author of the debut novel All Our Wrong Todays, Elan Mastai, dropped by the show this week to talk about his fiction debut, the science of time travel, and finding inspiration in dark places.

The writer and producer has written movies for both indie and Hollywood studios, including scripts for Fox, Sony, Warner Brothers, and Paramount.

His most recent film – What If, a comedy starring Daniel Radcliffe, Zoe Kazan, Adam Driver, and Mackenzie Davis – premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2013. Elan won the Canadian Academy Award and the Writers Guild of Canada Award for his script, and the movie played in over 30 countries.

His new novel – All Our Wrong Todays – is a sci-fi tinged, time-travel romance and much buzzed about debut that is rumored to have landed the writer a seven-figure book deal worth north of a million dollars.

The book has been described as “Dark Matter meets Back to the Future,” and even prior to the book’s publication, the film rights were sold to Paramount Pictures.

Andy Weir, bestselling author of The Martian, called it, “A thrilling tale of time travel and alternate timelines with a refreshingly optimistic view of humanity’s future.”

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In Part One of this file Elan Mastai and I discuss:

  • His grandfather’s vintage sci-fi collection and how it inspired him
  • How he launched his screenwriting career by translating Pulp Fiction into a kid’s movie
  • Why writers need to know their weaknesses
  • How the busy screenwriter and producer found time to write a novel
  • The hard science of time travel and storytelling

The Show Notes

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