James Bonnet - Astoria Filmwrights

James Bonnet, the founder and CEO of Storymaking.com is an internationally known writer, teacher and story consultant. He lives in Los Angeles, now, but he grew up in New York City and has been a professional writer for more than 40 years. He started out as an actor in the Tony Award winning hit Broadway show about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Sunrise at Campobello, creating the role of his eldest son, James Roosevelt. He landed his first professional writing job when he was 23, writing for a television series called It’s A Man’s World. Ever since that time he has been creatively driven by only one thing: discovering the secrets that underlie great stories. He was elected twice to the Board of Directors of the Writer's Guild of America and has written or acted in more than forty television shows and features. The important new ideas about story in his book Stealing Fire from the Gods: The Complete Guide to Story For Writers And Filmmakers are having a major impact on writers in all media. In his forthcoming book, Cracking the Story Code: The Hidden Structures in Great Stories and What They Mean, he will thoroughly analyze fifty of the world’s greatest stories and the extraordinary secrets they reveal about ourselves and our evolutionary path.

Since 1990 Bonnet has been conducting intensive weekend seminars in Los Angeles, and consulting with screenwriters, producers, directors, novelists, lawyers, psychologists, corporations, and video game creators. Since 2006 he has been holding workshop/retreats in France and Santa Monica and teaching in Paris, London and Singapore. His book has been taught in university courses around the world.