Your Creative Career: The (Unofficial) Walkthrough Guide

Being a creative can sometimes feel really confusing, especially early on. There’s a lot of false starts and a lack of clarity about how to make progress professionally.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a simple free Walkthrough Guide for building a creative career that was similar to beating levels in an old school console video game like Zelda or Super Mario Brothers?

I thought so too! So I made one.

While art is always subjective, I don’t think building a stronger career as a professional creative has to be. Whatever kind of art you make, I'm pretty sure there's an audience out there who would like it. The trick is just in finding those people.

The way I see it, there are four main elements (quests) that everybody needs to complete as we all build out towards a stronger career as professional creatives. These are:

–Portfolio

–Pitching Documents

–Online Presence

–Artistic Identity

This walkthrough isn’t about evaluating your work as an artist or as a creative. You know your own craft. Art is deeply personal, and any attempt to shove your creativity down into tidy little boxes is bound to crash and burn in a smoldering ball of flames.

Instead, this Walkthrough Guide is meant to help fellow creatives figure out how far along we all are in building up our long-term careers as professionals, and then determine what we each want to tackle next.

If you complete most of these four quests, you should start to see traction.

What you get:

This is a 9-page PDF with lots of questions to figure out how much progress you've made towards building out a career as a creative professional. Score high enough and you'll earn (virtual) medallions!

Plus, by downloading this guide you'll also get my weekly free newsletter that links to other tools I've found (or made) for creatives, weekly coworking sessions, and rambling tangents about life as a creative for when you want to productively procrastinate. (Okay, semi-productively...). Hopefully useful and simple to opt-out of at any time.

About me:

Hi! I’m Toby. It’s great to meet you.

I’m a screenwriter and playwright living in Philadelphia and I’ve been working as a creative for over a decade. I write LGBT coming-of-age scripts about well-intentioned humanists figuring out what they value in a world that’s hard for them to navigate. My scripts have placed in Austin Film Festival, Screencraft, Script Pipeline, and Roadmap. For the last few years I’ve also been working as a coach and consultant helping others with accountability and their writing, and I have led various workshops along the way.

What other people have said about working with me:

“If you're looking for a script doctor, Toby certainly has those diagnostic chops, but more empowering to writers is the foundational approach he takes. Through a series of questions he will open up your script for you so you can get in there and see for yourself. A session with Toby gives you access to your own play that you didn't realize you were locked out of!”

–Sharon Black

“Toby offered me insights which were devoid of ego and keyed into the nature of my own voice… by posing questions that helped me to find my own way, encouraging me each step of the way.” 

–Jessica Kahler

“Toby has an extraordinary ability to listen actively, communicate effectively, and integrate diverse perspectives… he fosters a positive and productive collaborative environment, demonstrating a commitment to collective success and a genuine respect.”

–Veronica Reyes-How

“I have been fortunate enough to receive constructive feedback from Toby on multiple screenplays. His positive and supportive nature is contagious… If you’re thinking of Toby for your script feedback process, I would say do it!”

–Adrian Prospero

FAQ

If I download this guide and I don't like it, can I get a refund?

I... no? As I said above, it's free. At that point I think I'd just be giving you money, which doesn't sound quite right.

I have a question that's not here. What can I do?

Email me! Please reach out to me at toby@tobytieger.com – I'd love to hear from you.