My Substack has a name: Plot Twist!

Twenty years after I started my first blog...

Since it’s December, I’ve started one of my favorite writing traditions: my annual “Year in the Life” recap. It’s my way of pulling back the curtain on the past 12 months in Hollywood and sharing the ups (so high!) and downs (impossibly low).

But this year I’m trying something different. I’m committing to this whole Substack thing with a new name for my publication: Plot Twist! by Nadine Jolie Courtney. (What do you think? I think it’s kind of perfect.)

So, with the new publication name and annual recap in the works (look out for it on December 31st), this feels like a great time to reintroduce myself, since my career is nothing but one continual work-in-progress:

I’m a novelist, screenwriter and ghostwriter, as well as a former magazine editor and freelance writer. Been writing professionally for more than 25 years, which is super confusing because I don’t feel that old! Anyhow, fancy schmancy credentials incoming:

Books sold to HarperCollins, Macmillan and Simon & Schuster (among them All-American Muslim Girl and Romancing the Throne); TV shows sold to Netflix and Amazon; movies written for Academy Award-winners like the producers behind Spotlight and studios like Participant; bylines in publications like Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Town & Country.

As a TV/feature writer in Hollywood, I’ve adapted a few other novelists’ books, but I got my foot in the door by writing a pilot adapting my own book - something everybody advised me NOT to do, but which resulted in me:

• landing an Emmy-winning director

• getting into the WGA

• signing with CAA and Entertainment 360

• selling to Netflix in the room (!)

So sometimes those “ooh, sorry, Hollywood doesn’t work like that, ACTUALLY” experts are wrong. Everything is upside-down and the only real rule is don’t be boring anyway.

Those who remember me from the Jolie in NYC days know that blogging was an instrumental part of me. Starting that blog literally changed my life - but after my eldest was born, life became too chaotic and time was non-existent.

Now that both of my girls are in school, I finally have my time and my life back, and career-wise, things have been…interesting ‘round these parts! So moving forward, I’ll update here with personal stories, industry insights, and practical advice on everything from writing novels to selling shows and adapting books for film and TV. Basically the helpful stuff that friends (and former roommates’ cousins) are constantly picking my brain about.

Will I post weekly? Monthly? I dunno! We’ll figure it out together!

If you’re already following me, thank you! I love you! I’d be grateful if you’d share with any authors curious about making the Book to Film transition (I have so much to say about this!), or with newbie screenwriters who you think might benefit from bullshit-free advice from somebody currently in the trenches. Because advice from A-list writers is all well-and-good, but sometimes it’s more helpful to get Hollywood advice from somebody who understands the struggle and whose battle scars are fresh.

If there’s anything you’d like me to post about — any burning questions about how to get an agent, or the difference between a fiction book proposal and a non-fiction one, or what the hell actually goes in a TV show pitch — please let me know. Down the road, I plan to do some cool stuff like posting film treatments + book proposals that sold, and doing a video series where you can see what a real TV pitch that sold to a streamer looks like.

My life has been nothing but one big Plot Twist, so if you’re a writer (or dreaming of becoming one!), I’m here to share what I’ve learned — and what I’m still figuring out along the way.

xoxo, Nadine