When you see a tweet like, "Screenwriting update: Summer of 2020, I promised myself I’d be repped by the end of the year. I was repped by fall & optioned a pilot to a studio soon after. 2021 my goal was staffing. Now that the deal is closed, I’m officially a writer on a TV show I love & I’m SO EXCITED 😭," you definitely pause and want to know the story behind that.

Kelechi Urama’s story began as a first-generation American with Nigerian parents in Maryland.

"As a kid, I really loved to read and I loved to watch television and movies, and I feel like that’s just sort of the perfect storm for creating a TV writer. My parents would literally drop me off at the library in the morning and pick me up when the library was closing. The librarians were probably like, 'why am I stuck with this random Nigerian child?' But I was just super happy to be there. So, from a pretty young age I naturally got curious about well, what kind of stories can I create, right? It turns out that the stories I created were really just like plagiarized Baby-Sitters Club," she bursts out laughing. "But as I got older, I started to really branch out and put my own spin on things."

With writing firmly in her blood, Urama went to the University of Pittsburgh for media and professional communications to become a journalist. However, "While I was in Pittsburgh, I kind of stumbled upon what turned out to be a very active filmmaking community. I started doing short films and really digging into television writing. I feel like that was when I realized, 'oh, wait, you know, the shows that I loved as a kid were written by people. I love to write ... maybe this is something I should really look into.'"

Look into it she did. And for someone who absorbed all genres of television — "I feel like if it was on TV in the ‘90s, early 2000s, I was into it" — she threw herself into learning her craft.

"I started screenwriting around 2014, 2015. You can't underestimate the importance of just learning and practicing. I feel like a lot of people are sometimes eager to skip to the next step. Before I really started writing, I read anything I could get my hands on. The annual Black List scripts are usually available online so I would read those. I also took a few classes, I wrote spec scripts of shows that were on-air — New Girl, Insecure."

To Urama, writing spec scripts is a valuable learning experience, whether the industry still values them or not.

"I think for people that are just starting out, it's the best thing to do, just because it can be very hard and intimidating to sit down and be like, 'okay, let me come up with this new idea for this new pilot in this new world from scratch.' But jumping into a world that you already know and are very familiar with, it's a really good way to learn structure. What's the A story? What’s the B story? You have that template."

In 2018, Urama made the move to Los Angeles, or rather just outside the city limits, and quickly learned all about that infamous traffic that would eventually have her moving into L.A. proper. She got a nine-to-five to pay the bills and briefly considered the assistant thing.

"It’s probably the more straightforward path into getting into a writers room."

But instead, Urama focused on getting her writing noticed.

"When the pandemic happened, like everyone else I found myself with a ton of time at home and I think something sparked in me where I was like, 'okay, you moved out here, it's time to do what you came out here to do.' So, I made a game plan," she said.

"Between June and I want to say August, I really just sat down and wrote like, three pilots, half-hour comedies, back-to-back."

Her writers groups were super helpful in the feedback department, and Urama focused on "revising, revising, and getting them as tight as I possibly could" before submitting to The Black List, where she scored eights and that boost connected her with her manager in September 2020.

"He was so excited about the script of mine; he started sending it out pretty much right away, and then I met with Party Over Here, which is the Lonely Island Production Company. I thought it was just a general meeting, but it turned out that they were very interested in the script," she said. 

After a round of notes that Urama implemented immediately, the script went to CBS Studios, which also went really well with an option agreement.

"But I also really, really wanted to get staffed because I was just like, 'I’m ready to be in a room,'" said Urama, who was also participating in the Blackmagic Collective Breakthrough Initiative at that point.

Her incredible work ethic to just keep trying all avenues to achieve her goals is inspiring — especially considering that Urama was still working full-time in an unrelated field.

Now we’re in 2021 and she’s racking up the general meetings, "Which was very intensive, very crazy. I was meeting so many really cool people, but I wanted to be able to just make this my professional life, as well. So, I had the goal to staff," she said.

Between going on generals and networking, Urama was following the trades, too.

"That was advised to me very early on. And it's something that I did. I would just pay attention to Deadline, Hollywood Reporter, Variety, things like that, to know which shows were in development, which were getting ordered. And then I would see if I, you know, had any connections to the people on those shows so that we could reach out."

Which is kind of how Urama landed her staffing gig: she saw the announcement in the trades, her manager reached out to set up a meeting, and she interviewed in August. Now, she’s staffed on the Starz show Run the World, which reflects her goals. "It feels very, very surreal," she said.

"If you’re writing, you have to be committed to making it as good as possible. I see it a lot with people that are just starting out. Even for myself, if you’re used to writing novels, a journalist ... understanding that screenwriting is a new form of writing, and you might not immediately be good at it. Don’t try to rush the process. If you’ve found your style as a screenwriter, then start reaching out. Writers groups are so, so helpful."

Building a support network is also important.

"... Learning what it's like to be with other writers, learning how to give feedback, because that's a lot of what you're doing in the writers room," she said.

"Also, those [writers groups] are the people that you are really going to be coming up with, right? So, it's really nice to be able to have people cheering on your own success, but also to be able to watch their successes, as well. My favorite thing is when people from the writing groups I’m in get staffed or get reps, or make a short, or, you know, finish their first feature, things like that. It’s just very exciting to be part of a community."

Sound advice, and that Starz show is very lucky to have Urama as part of theirs.