At an Industry Interview by Writers Boot Camp Founder Jeffrey Gordon (JG) with Sonja Warfield, alumnus, television writer, and author. Sonja is best known for her work on the Emmy Award-winning NBC sitcom Will & Grace, as well as BET’s hit comedy The Game.  At the time of the interview, she was Co-Executive Producer for HBO’s The Gilded Age.  Sonja’s nearly 20-year career includes credits from a diverse range of television shows including Disney Channel’s popular Liv and Maddie, BET’s Zoe Ever After, which featured pop star Brandy, the animated series She-Ra for Dreamworks/Netflix, and ABC’s Jake in Progress.

She’s developed and written pilots/projects for ABC, NBC, Netflix, Nickelodeon, Lifetime, Universal TV, Sony Pictures Television and HBO. Sonja also writes feature films, including a screenplay adaptation of a novel for Alcon Entertainment and 2S, a Hilary Swank production company. She’s also the author of the entertaining, empowering and inspiring book Get Your Butt Off My Couch (And Your Hand Outta My Wallet).  Sonja has a B.A. in Cinema/Television-Critical Studies from the University of Southern California where she has taught television writing.

Here’s a key exchange excerpted from the interview:

JG: “You’re crafting current television. You’ve got these (multiple) storylines and these through lines and they don’t cross over that much. How do you develop those storylines and those through lines? So a good set of questions would be—What’s a good ending? What’s a good middle? Where do you want to get those characters by the end of the episode?”

SW: “What’s so amazing about Writers Boot Camp and what you’ve created is that it offers structure. It offers great cinematic structure, great structure for developing a story, great narrative structure–everything that you need to make a great screenplay. Which also translates to television as well.”

After a breakdown of how Sonja uses the 3-6-3 (a proprietary exercise to identify, understand, and showcase a story’s structure) and how it led to a better understanding of what Writers Boot Camp calls a story’s Dynamic Rhythm, she said: “Your system, especially for a creative mind that’s all over the place, enables one to hone in on the unfolding of this story in an engaging and entertaining, compelling way.”