The essay only works when it sounds like you.
I'm a writer with more than twenty years in film and television. I help students tell the stories only they can tell.
Deadlines are around the corner. There's still time to do this well.
Whether you're staring at a blank document or sitting on a fourth draft you can't get over the finish line, you're not behind in any way that matters. What you need isn't a six-month process. It's someone who can help you find the story quickly — or find what's wrong with the one you've already got — and then make the writing genuinely good.
Get on the calendar this weekMost essays read like a résumé in paragraphs.
Students are told to be authentic and then handed a word count. What usually comes back is a list of accomplishments with feelings attached — competent, careful, and almost impossible to tell apart from the hundred essays read before it.
An admissions officer spends a few minutes with an application. The essay is the only part of it written in the student's own voice. It should sound like a person, not a form.
I spent twenty years getting strangers to care about a story.
In film and television you have about a page to make a reader keep turning. That is roughly the attention a college essay gets. The craft is the same either way: one specific moment, a voice that sounds like someone real, and a reason to read the next line.
I'm Ryan Jaffe. I wrote Fox's The Rocker, wrote and directed the indie dramedy This Is Happening, wrote the estate-sanctioned Jeff Buckley story Mystery White Boy, and landed on the 2018 Black List with the Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne bio pic, Sharon. The job in all of them is the same: make a reader believe a specific person exists. That's what I do with a student's essay.
How we work
Find the story
We talk until something real surfaces. Not the biggest thing you've done — the thing you can't stop noticing.
Build the draft
You write. I push on structure, scene and stakes, the way a script gets notes — direct, specific, never precious.
Make every line earn it
Then we cut. By the last pass it's shorter, sharper, and unmistakably yours.
Let's find your story.
Twenty minutes, no charge, no obligation. Tell me where you are and I'll tell you honestly whether I can help.
Get in touch