W. Reed Moran
W. Reed Moran is the author of the textbook Why Plot Never Matters: Telling the Screen Stories in Your Heart (2015) for Kendall Hunt Publishers. A former Washington, D.C., litigator who discovered that it was writing and teaching he loved, not corporate law, he relocated to Los Angeles as a staff writer on a "top ten" network drama. Professor Moran subsequently wrote on other network staffs, and sold several drama pilots, features, TV movie scripts and animation, as well as episodes for such iconic series as Simon & Simon, Star Trek Next Generation, Swamp Thing, Renegade, Macgyver, and Baywatch. He also wrote for the critically acclaimed A&E network drama series Hollywood Detective, for which he received a CableAce Award nomination for Best Writing on a Dramatic Series. He has been honored by a number of national screenwriting competitions for his original work in the years since.
Professor Moran has been a medical journalist for USA Today online and has taught English literature in the summer program at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. A graduate of Exeter, he went on to receive degrees from Dartmouth College and the University of Virginia Law School, where he was editor of the Virginia Journal of International Law. Professor Moran teaches screenwriting at CSULB and serves as an adviser to the Phi Beta Kappa chapter on campus.
