He told Entertainment Weekly interviewer Melissa Maerz, "When I was growing up, my mom and dad took me to the Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia.

The result was Dawson's Creek, a semi-autobiographical tale set in a small coastal community not unlike Oriental.

Dawson's Creek premiered on The WB on January 20, 1998, and was an immediate hit that helped launch the newly created television network.

In 1999, Williamson left the show to focus on other endeavors, among them ABC's Wasteland, which failed to attract a sizable audience and was canceled after its thirteen-episode first season.

Despite receiving negative reviews from critics, the film helped launch the careers of actors Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze, Jr., Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Ryan Phillippe, going on to spawn two sequels, neither of which Williamson was involved with.

Teaching Mrs. Tingle (as it was renamed after the Columbine High School massacre) followed a group of students getting even with their vindictive teacher.

The series followed a novelist returning to his hometown, a coastal community within Washington state, which was experiencing strange occurrences—seeming to mirror the plot ABC's Twin Peaks.

Williamson penned another script which Wes Craven would go on to direct called Cursed, after a failed first shoot starring an almost entirely different cast before re-writes and re-shoots turned the project into something new, it was finally released in 2005.

In 2006, Williamson began production on a new teen drama, tentatively titled Palm Springs, for The CW, the successor to the WB network.

[3] The series follows the life of Elena Gilbert (Nina Dobrev), who falls in love with vampire Stefan Salvatore (Paul Wesley), and soon finds herself caught in a love triangle between Stefan and his older brother, Damon (Ian Somerhalder), while the brothers are also being haunted by the past they've had with Katherine Pierce (also played by Dobrev).

The series also focuses on the lives of Elena's friends and other inhabitants of the fictional town of Mystic Falls, Virginia.

[4] The series revolves around six teenage witches who form a Circle coven on the fictional town of Chance Harbor, Washington.

Starring critically acclaimed actor Kevin Bacon, the series follows an ex-FBI agent who finds himself in the middle of a network of serial killers.

[7] Williamson also created Stalker, a psychological thriller centered on a pair of detectives who handle stalking incidents for the Threat Management Unit of the LAPD.

[9][10] In March 2020, it was announced that Williamson would serve as executive producer for the fifth installment of the Scream franchise, which was directed by Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin.

[12][13] In January 2022, it was announced that Williamson would reunite with Julie Plec for an adaptation of the comic Dead Day for Peacock.

[14] In January 2023, it was announced Peacock was no longer moving forward with Dead Day but that the potential series was being shopped to other networks.

[15] In February 2022, it was announced that a sequel to Scream (2022) had been greenlit, with a planned release date of March 31, 2023, with Williamson on board as an executive producer.