He first worked as a miner for the Wismut company, studied acting in Dresden and Berlin and at the DEFA-Nachwuchsstudio in Potsdam-Babelsberg.
There Richter also wrote his first work, the children's book Das Zauberfaß (The Magic Barrel), which made him known as a young author.
Richter became a staff writer at the Deutsches Nationaltheater und Staatskapelle Weimar, later a dramaturge at the Landestheater in Dessau and finally a screenwriter at the DEFA Studio for Feature Films in Babelsberg.
He wrote his first screenplay for the East German film production company in 1962 for and with Walter Beck [de]: Als Martin 14 war (based on a story by Hans Schönrock).
Plenum des ZK der SED [de] of the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, he was dismissed from DEFA in the mid-1960s due to cultural-political disagreements and in 1966 was punitively transferred to Filmfabrik Wolfen as artistic director of the Kulturhaus, where he worked until 1975.