Introducing...

Kim Damiano

Kim Damiano is the author of  16 feature length screenplays, 2 short screenplays, 1 feature length stage play, and 2 short length stage plays.  She published her first screenplay,   Shelby Young, in 2006.  This spring, she will publish her second screenplay, Cordella, followed by a fall publishing of  her third screenplay, Merry Christmas, Darling.          

Damiano wrote her first screenplay when she was sixteen, but has been writing creatively since the first grade.  After dabbling with short stories, plays, and an attempted novel, Damiano decided  to try her hand at screenwriting, since she was basically writing movies in her head, but trying to make them fit as a novel or play. She went to the library and checked out Tom Stemple's Screenwriting, read the book, then set out to write a feature length screenplay.  After reading the book, Damiano spent most of her spare time writing the screenplay and within two months, had completed her first draft.  While this screenplay will never see the light of day, it was nonetheless an accomplishment to finally complete a piece, and the beginning to a lifelong devotion to the craft of screenwriting. 

She continued to write screenplays while still in High School, and in 1993 began studying the art of creative writing  in college.  In 1993, she wrote her first feature length stage play during a writer's workshop in college.  She continued to hone her writing skills through the writer's workshops and  by reading as many books as she could on the art of screenwriting, notebly Lew Hunter's Screenwriting 101. She also studied stage plays by greats such as Eugene O'Neil, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Marsha Norman.  Most importantly, though, she learned by just doing...writing 16 feature length screenplays from 1991 to 2005.

However, during this time, Damiano did not pursue screenwriting as a career, rather it remained a beloved hobby. In 2005, after completing  Shelby Young, she decided that it was time to actually do something and make her writing something more than just a hobby.  She decided to publish her most recent screenplay, Shelby Young. She chose the publishing route as opposed to production route for two very different reasons.  Damiano firmly believes that screenwriting is just as much of an artform as is literature.  While true that a screenplay is meant to be the roadmap to making a movie and is meant to ultimately be a visual art, Damiano believes that reading a  screenplay is as entertaining as reading a novel---if not more so.  Screenplays are comprised mostly of action and dialouge, with sparce details.  The sparce nature of screenplays allows the reader more freedom to use their imagination while reading...basically putting the reader into the director's chair!

The second reason is more of a practical one as opposed to a philisophical one;  the odds of selling a screenplay in Hollywood are very slim.  Also, if on that odd chance that a screenplay is optioned, there is no guarantee of production and most likely the final product on the screen hardly resembles the original screenplay---the original vision and intent of the author. When it comes right down to it, Damiano believes that a screenwriter, just like any other writer, is a story teller, and ultimately it doesn't matter how that story is told, as long as it is told and is told as the writer intended it to be told.

In 2006, Damiano created her own publishing company, Damiano Publishing, and published Shelby Young, in the summer of 2006.  Damiano is currently working on her forthcoming publication, Cordella, and developing an e-series, Rita Morelli.

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