Editorial and Marketing Consultant for SydField.com and Screenwriters, Inc.
WRITER, TEACHER, EDITOR, CONSULTANT
Residence: Los Angeles, California (USA)
Ms. Goodhartz is a multi-award-nominated screenwriter who started her career as a TV Academy Summer Intern, where she learned that most of the people with producer credits on her favorite shows were also writers.
Ms. Goodhartz then spent six years in the Corporate Communications Department of Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., which transferred her from NY to LA to run the West Coast office of that department.
She’ll always be grateful for the world-class training she received, which has been invaluable at every job she’s had since. Ms. Goodhartz scratched out her first two TV specs during holiday breaks while at Columbia, relying on the newest screenwriting guide then available: The Screenwriters Workbook by Syd Field.
- Writer – Television/Features
After leaving Columbia, Ms. Goodhartz wrote two new specs: one garnered her a spot in the newly revived Warner Bros. Comedy Writers Workshop, the other paved the way to the first Writers Guild Internship at Star Trek:TNG. Ms. Goodhartz was next hired by Walt Disney TV Animation on Bonkers! and Raw Toonage (Emmy-nominated for Outstanding Writing). A lot of animation writing followed, including the half-hour pilot of the cult hit Aeon Flux. She was also active in series development at FoxKids, Nickelodeon, DreamWorks and Universal Cartoon. Returning to live-action, Ms. Goodhartz wrote a series pilot for CBS and re-developed that script as a feature for Universal. She later penned two Writers Guild Award-nominated scripts: the “Hind Sight” episode of Young Hercules starring Ryan Gosling, and the family feature Dragonheart: A New Beginning (which also earned her a U.K. Movie Music Award nomination for the lyrics to the film’s theme song, “My Heart Goes with You”). Ms. Goodhartz ran the West Coast Writers Room for Galidor: Defenders of the Outer Dimension, and wrote the Houston WorldFest Bronze Prize-winning dramatic short The Attackmen. On the non-fiction side of the biz, she developed How the Irish Saved Civilization and The Gifts of the Jews for Daniel H. Birman Productions, and she worked on Discovery Health’s Medical Maverick. Ms. Goodhartz continues to develop projects for film and TV.
- Teacher – Screenwriting
A long-time member of the TV Academy’s Education & Program Services Committee, Ms. Goodhartz served as a Visiting Professional at a number of colleges and universities, including Arizona State, UC San Diego, UC San Francisco and Golden West College. She remains a regular guest lecturer at UCLA Extension in animation writing and for their Writers Program’s Showrunners Bootcamp. In 2016-17, Ms. Goodhartz was the Program Director of WritersLab, a rigorous, professional TV training course she designed and taught in Singapore. Over the Lab’s ten weeks, Ms. Goodhartz developed a slate of eight tonally varied series for live-action and animation including comedies, dramas and musicals; three of these were funded and produced for their local market. You can read more about that experience here: The Paradigm in Singapore.
- Editor – Developmental/Copy
Ms. Goodhartz guides novelists from initial ideas to final edits, optimizing potential character arcs and narrative structures as the basis for scalable I.P.s for filmed entertainment, and beyond. Her editorial work includes Under the Shadow: Children of the First Star Vol. 1, The Fabliss Life of Bella Mellman and its upcoming sequel, published by BooksEndependent; and Lady Sherlock: Circle of the Smiling Dead for WordFire Press, as well as its upcoming sequel.
- Consultant
Ms. Goodhartz has served as a Consultant for Viacom International, producing public affairs videos for institutional investors. Currently, she provides vital support to expand awareness of Syd Field’s unique contribution to the art and industry of screenwriting as an Editorial and Marketing Consultant for SydField.com and Screenwriters, Inc.