Adele Griffin: When Thomas Edison's great-great grandson accidentally uncovers the first clue to where the infamous Alchemy Papers - a formula to make gold - are hidden, he sets off a high-stakes adventure throughout the five boroughs of New York City.

Geoff Watson: Adele and I have always loved the big Spielberg 80s movies - "Indiana Jones," "E.T." and wanted to write something with a great mythology and a lot of heart.

GW: We trade the script every day, taking advantage of the three hour time difference so that I can work on it late (I'm more of a night owl), then I email it for Adele to wake up to (she prefers mornings). I write all the new stuff or changes in red font, and Adele writes in blue font. If we like what the other one written, we make it black.

AG: Geoff writes the likable characters and I write the phobic ones.

GW: Tom (in Alchemy Papers) has an earnestness that I love. He's always taking on everyone else's problems and trying to fix them. I remember doing that a lot as a kid.

AG: I don't remember that.

Q: The biggest question is how did the two of you get the idea to write together as brother and sister and have you collaborated like this all your life?

GW: I have never written a script with anyone other than Adele, and I don't think I could. She is incredibly smart and thinks about stories all the time. I sometimes forget that in addition to our scripts, she is usually working on one or two novels simultaneously. She also has thick skin and is brutally honest. It's a great working relationship … at least on my end.

GW: Just to note, Adele wrote that. That's why it's in blue. I haven't signed off on that yet.

Q: How long have you been writing?

AG: I've been writing young adult fiction for over 10 years, and published 15 books, but never wrote a screenplay. Geoff graduated from college in 2000 and went out to LA. He got lots of experience in Hollywood working on all different aspects of movie-making. He worked for a producer and a director, and the whole time, he was always sending me scripts. He would say, "If you liked the movie, you'll love the script."

Q: How did you come up with the idea for "The Alchemy Papers?"

GW: We wanted to write a Goonies-style family movie, and I remember walking past the Frick Museum in Manhattan and thinking, wouldn't it be cool if Thomas Edison figured out the recipe for gold, then hid clues all over New York City? The characters and story consumed me, and a few days later, I had a 15 page outline to show Adele.

AG: Yes, I leeched onto it.

Q: What is your overall process of writing?

GW: I'm very routine. My schedule is two hours on, three hours off, throughout the day. But I especially like to write at night. I think that comes from having had so many nine to five jobs. Sometimes if I am having a hard time focusing, I'll go to a café. I really like Insomnia on Beverly Blvd. and Poinsettia.

AG: I'm married, and so I like to get everything done by evening to have time with my husband. Between my dog and Erich, I have to commit to a schedule, which is a good thing, or I'd spend all day in my pajamas eating Ben & Jerry's on tostado chips, procrastinating.

Q: Tell me the story of how you went from unsold to sold?

GW: I don't think Adele and I had a 'big break' that came out of nowhere. We've been pretty methodical.

AG: We had some fizzled detours. We wrote a supernatural thriller, then a sudsy coming-of-age script, a cool but bleak noir script, and then a comedy that got us some attention but didn't sell. All along the way, we kept writing young characters into our plotlines. Eventually we realized that youthful characters and family adventures were our real strength, our best voice.

GW: Which makes sense, given Adele's book background, and the fact that we are brother and sister. We have our entire childhood in common. Then we got hired for scale to write a romantic comedy, and finally sold a spec last month. If "The Alchemy Papers" hadn't sold, we would have written another script, probably another family adventure genre.

Q: How long did it take to get it sold after you finished writing it?

GW & AG: About a year. We spent several months working to get it set up with a production company that had a studio deal. When they fell off the project, our agent and managers took it out as a spec with no attachments. That was terrifying. We're glad it worked out.

Q: What did you get paid?

GW & AG: They gave us a really nice deal. We have enough to pay rent until we sell the next script.

Q: Are you or did you do the re-writes?

GW & AG: Yes. We're almost finished of a polish for Kopelson Entertainment. We're very happy with how it's evolved.

Q: What are you working on now?

GW: Aside from the polish, we're chasing some rewrite jobs, and Adele has a great idea for a teen thriller. More accurately, she has a great idea for a twist, and we are in the process of building the story and characters around that.

Q: Did you ever write anything before? Journaling, poetry?

AG: One of my early jobs right out of school was ghost-writing a storybook for a popular 90s pop singer. It was the kind of experience that made me choose very carefully on my next collaboration. In fact, I guess I waited seven years, for Geoff to finish school.

Q: What is your background?

GW: I graduated from Harvard in 2000 with a degree in History. I couldn't bear the idea of going to Law School so I moved out here to potentially get into producing or managing. I quickly figured out, however, that writing was all I wanted to do so I worked for a writer/director, Charles Shyer, for about three years, and learned a ton from that experience.

AG: When I finished U. Penn in 1993, I worked in publishing. My first book Rainy Season came out in 1996.

Q: How has that affected your writing and where you are today?

GW: Always being the new kid, and always moving around, I developed a pretty active imagination. I had a lot of invisible friends who have stayed with me well into my adult life. I'm kidding … sort of.

Q: Did you have any actors in mind when you were writing the characters?

AG: For our villain, Hugh Jackman! We love his versatility. He can be gruff like Wolverine and then as polished as Cary Grant. He's an extremely charismatic actor. With him in mind, our lines take new energy.

Q: What do you think is more important, reading scripts or watching movies?

GW: You learn two entirely different, though equally important skills, but if I had to say, watching movies is probably more important. There seems to be less and less importance on what's written than big, visually enticing set pieces. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing though.

AG: Though I remember watching "Sixth Sense," and then years later reading the script, and looking at that moment of the reveal typed on the page, and it knocked me out. There are some writers whose wit and style are all over the script, then the movie doesn't seem to translate it. I'm always learning from that.

Q: What are some books that every pre-pro should read?

GW & AG: We discover so much from the super-pros. Writers such as Jim Sheridan, the Nolan brothers, Larry McMurtry, Miranda July, Shane Black, Tina Fey, Richard Curtis, Richard Lagravanese. Screenplays are a strange art because they're not written for public consumption. And yet a brilliant script like "Shakespeare in Love" is in its own way complete as an art form.

Q: How important do you believe living in Hollywood was to getting your break?

AG: Geoff's comprehensive knowledge of the whole system has been essential. We couldn't have launched without one of us being in Hollywood. And since I don't drive, I'm really glad it was Geoff.

Q: Do you have any tips for first-time writers?

GW: Clarity and grace in a pitch. We can never underestimate it. No matter how much we believe in our material, those moments in the room aren't about our personal enthusiasm. They're about connecting. It took us several scripts to figure that part out.

Q: Do you adhere to the outlining process?

AG: As we get more fluent in our own brand of shorthand, we're less strict about the "show your work" element.

GW: I used to labor over index cards for a month before even going to the computer, but now I'm more fluid and open, I can make connections easier.

Q: What do you think is the secret to your success?

GW: Our Mom taught us to say exactly what we think. House rules were no back-stabbing, no tattle-telling. We're pretty up-front each other. That's a big help.

Q: Do you have any advice to other screenwriters?

GW: Create your stories around interesting characters that could potentially attract marketable actors. That seems to be what production companies are interested in.

AG: Everything that I write in the late, inspired hours turns out pretty terrible when I read it the next morning. So I try to celebrate that I am a plodder.

Q: Tell me the most valuable lesson that you have learned since getting in the industry.

GW: Trust yourself. So many times, we've been given notes that have gone against our instincts. Especially when producers dangle their director and actor attachments over us. It's easy to become intoxicated by those promises. That's when we have to check ourselves, and remember they have ninety-nine other projects, and no one is thinking about our script as long or as hard as we are. So changes have to be either totally intuitive, or pinpoint logical.

AG: We also work hard around our different schedules and time zones, to ensure that we're both on all the calls. And we never speak against each other, or our Mom would kill us.

interview by Rita Cook, courtesy of www.moviebytes.com