Crafted Journey How To: Building a Creative Career Across Scripts, Stages, and Sound
Creative careers rarely move in a straight line, especially for writers working across stage, screen, audio, books, and independent film. Sustaining that kind of life often means finding opportunities wherever they appear, building a strong network, staying open to different formats, and saying yes to collaborations that can lead somewhere unexpected. The stakes are familiar to anyone trying to make work outside a traditional system: talent matters, but so do persistence, resourcefulness, and community.
So how does a writer build a lasting creative career when the path is not one ladder, but a series of projects, pitches, relationships, and risks?
On this episode of Crafted Journey, host Suzy DeLine speaks with Barry M. Putt, Jr., a dramatist, author, and screenwriter, about his path from NYU Tisch School of the Arts to independent film, audio drama, playwriting, publishing, and festival curation. Their conversation traces the realities of finding creative work, the resources that have helped him grow, and his role in the upcoming Out of the Cellar Film Festival, including its 48-hour filmmaking challenge.
The main topics of conversation…
- Building a multi-format writing career: Putt discusses his background in dramatic writing, his work with independent filmmakers, and his extensive experience in audio drama, including projects with companies in the U.S., Canada, China, and Israel.
- Finding creative opportunities: The episode explores how writers can seek out gigs, community, and inspiration through resources such as Mandy.com, NYCPlaywrights.org, InkTip, Screenwriting Staffing, and craft books like The Art of Dramatic Writing.
- Launching the Out of the Cellar Film Festival: Putt shares his role curating film submissions and helping support the festival’s 48-hour filmmaking challenge, which invites participants to create a film under time pressure for inclusion in a special festival section.
Barry M. Putt, Jr. is an author, screenwriter, playwright, and audio drama writer from Somerset, New Jersey. He studied dramatic writing at NYU Tisch School of the Arts and has held multiple development deals with filmmakers and film companies, including Omega Entertainment. His produced work includes more than 50 audio dramas, collaborations with The Radio Theater Project, and the forthcoming historical fiction audio drama The Liberty Boys of 1776, expected through Blackstone Audio. Putt also co-edited and co-wrote The Audio Dramatists Resource Guide, a resource for writers seeking audio drama production opportunities. His upcoming projects include the play Omeed’s Tapestries, scheduled for a full production as part of the Midtown International Theatre Festival, and The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew on Film, TV, and Stage, a forthcoming BearManor Media book.
Article written by MarketScale.
