David B. Holton
(as told by Dave)
I’m a writer, visual storyteller, and creative producer. Over the years, that has meant publishing short fiction, writing scripts for screen and stage, analyzing screenplays for studios and talent agencies, acting on stage, helping to produce filmed content that has reached millions of viewers, and working as a professional photographer. Recent storytelling highlights include winning “Best Mockumentary Microfilm” at the Austin Comedy Film Festival, being named an Emerging Voice in Fiction by Oyster River Pages, earning recognition in multiple screenplay competitions, and writing a literary novel, White Fawn, that I am now sending out into the world in search of a traditional publishing home.
On paper, my path zigzags… a lot. I hold a Certificate in Producing for Film & Television from UCLA Extension, an MBA in Marketing and Entrepreneurship from UNC Chapel Hill, and a BSc in Civil Engineering from NC State. I started my twenties working as a field engineer on bridges, finished them as a management consultant advising Fortune 500 leaders on business strategy and logistics, and made the turn into my thirties as a multifaceted freelancer across writing, film, and theatre. My path has taken me through a lot of different forms of storytelling, but the through-line is pretty simple. I care about character above all, and I don’t believe that reality is all there is… though I tend to ground my work in the real world, more often than not, I like to mix in a bit of magic here and there.
Fun fact: When I was learning to write fiction, I copied Ernest Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms” and Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian” word-for-word as an exercise, and translated Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” Isabel Allende’s “The House of the Spirits,” and Laura Esquivel’s “Like Water for Chocolate” to learn how stories are built word by word and sentence by sentence (and to practice my Spanish, as a bonus). I approached my film, theatre, and photography studies with much the same dedication and persistence. I practiced craft in master classes and workshops, and through good old trial and error.
Notable Achievements
Writing & Visual Storytelling
Literary fiction: My short story “The Lightning Jar” was published in Oyster River Pages in their Emerging Voices in Fiction series. I recently completed White Fawn, a literary historical novel with a thread of magical realism set in Civil War–era eastern North Carolina.
Screenwriting: My feature scripts have placed in major competitions, including Semifinalist at the Atlanta Film Festival Screenplay Competition 2025, Quarterfinalist at BlueCat 2025, and Second Rounder at Launch Pad in 2021.
Filmmaking: During the pandemic, I wrote, directed, shot, acted in, and edited a no-budget mockumentary. It won “Best Mockumentary Microfilm” at the Austin Comedy Film Festival, picked up “Outstanding Achievement” at the Berlin Flash Film Festival, and was an official selection at both the New York Flash Film Festival and Sunday Shorts.
Theatre performance: I played Sergeant Trotter in Theatre of Dare’s 2022 production of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap. I also performed as Captain Arthur Barlowe in the 2021 season of The Lost Colony Outdoor Drama (70+ performances over 3 months).
Photography and visual storytelling: As a photographer, I focus on people and places: headshots, portraits, personal branding, behind-the-scenes, events, and documentary work. Some of that work has appeared in magazines and hung on the walls of galleries.
Journalism and copywriting: I wrote features for Milepost Magazine and Outer Banks This Week, covering local culture, small businesses, and coastal life.
Creative Producing, Production, and Development Experience
Feature films: I was Production Coordinator on the feature film Doomsday Device for CineTel Films, which was later distributed by Lionsgate.
Digital and web series: I’ve worked as a Creative Producer for a YouTube creator with more than eight million subscribers, served as Production Manager on multiple videos that crossed the four-million-view mark, and helped develop pilots for digital series. I also served as Line Producer and 1st Assistant Director on the eight-episode web series Friendless Five, released on Fullscreen TV.
Short film and video: Credits include Producer and Assistant Director on Wrestling Isn’t Wrestling (over four million views on YouTube), producing, co-directing, and assistant-directing multiple shorts for Funny or Die and other platforms, producing the VR short Vain (screened at festivals worldwide).
Live performance: I worked as a pre-production Assistant Technical Director for The Lost Colony Outdoor Drama’s 2021 season, leading teams building sets and lighting towers.
Music videos: 2nd Assistant Director on Ariana Grande’s music video “One Last Time,” helping to manage background actors and direct crowd scenes.
Story Analysis and Script Coverage: For Amazon Studios and Resolution Talent Agency, I provided screenplay coverage and story notes, evaluating premise, structure, character, and writing quality for development executives and story departments. I judged feature film and TV writing contests for Fresh Voices and the Tracking Board.
More Backstory
(you’re still reading? wow!)
I grew up on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, surrounded by stories. Ghost pirates, lost colonists, shipwrecks, hurricanes, old family tales. My friends and I acted them out in the woods and on the sandbars. Fact and fantasy were never that far apart. On the Outer Banks, everyone knows that Blackbeard’s headless body swam around his ship three times… no, five times… no… seven times before it finally sank into the sound (all depends on who you ask).
That love of story followed me into adulthood. Even while I was working on my Civil Engineering degree at NC State, I was hiking across campus to sneak into creative writing classes for fun. At that point, I still treated writing like a side hobby, so my twenties unfolded along a different track: four years as a field engineer building bridges, two years getting an MBA, and another two as a strategy and operations consultant for Fortune 500 companies. Those roles taught me how to work with all kinds of people, how to manage complex projects, and how to look all the way from “idea” to “finished” and navigate my way across the gaps in between.
Eventually, I grew tired of pretending stories were something I only cared about on the side. I moved to Los Angeles and joined the film and TV world. During my first year there, I studied Producing for Film, TV, and New Media at UCLA Extension. After that, I spent several years working on productions of all sizes, from features and web series to music videos, while also reading scripts as a freelance analyst for clients like Amazon Studios and Resolution Talent Agency.
After a while, I felt the pull to create my own material, and I returned to the place that shaped me, moving from L.A. to the Outer Banks of NC, where I shifted my focus toward creating in every way possible, writing fiction and drama, pursuing photography, and making films. I also spent time digging into local history, culture, and my own past experiences, which eventually coalesced into writing my novel “White Fawn.”
More recently, I’ve made a home base in New Orleans, a city that lives and breathes culture and holds its history close, much like the Outer Banks… though I traded a sandbar for a swamp and rural life for city living, there is much in common between the two… at their core they both contain a trove of stories… which is why I love them both! I’ve always been a traveler with an incurable case of wanderlust, and I suppose that stories are, for me, another form of travel, whether I’m consuming them or writing them… if I were starved of stories, I would surely perish!