Story. Screenplay. Sale.
:: Writer Laeta Kalogridis of Shutter Island’s advice: “Live within your means.” :: An endless curiosity: the processes of other writers. :: 12 step plan for getting published. :: Screenwriter Sheldon Turner in the Dialogue Series, a focus on the craft. :: Creating romantic chemistry between your characters. :: Your first script will always stink. … Read more
If Shakespeare were writing screenplays now, he’d be laughed out of Hollywood. Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet were both five acts long. Some printed editions of Hamlet weigh in around 400 pages. Would he have made it through a pitch meeting? Probably not. Somewhere along the line someone would have told him that he needed … Read more
“Personality: What Makes You the Way You Are” by Daniel Nettle. Oxford University Press, Oxford 298 pages. ISBN-978-0-19-921142-5 Amazon Price: US $10.17 I recently watched “Public Enemies”, Michael Mann’s portrait of John Dillinger, and came away very dissatisfied. John Dillinger was Public Enemy Number One, and Johnny Depp is a great Hollywood character actor. I … Read more
Let me get on my Project Gutenberg soapbox. One of the most under-appreciated opportunities for aspiring screenwriters is Project Gutenberg. As many of you know very well, most assignment jobs screenwriters pick-up are adaptations of known works. I truly believe that before you ever step onto the world stage with your writings, you should already have lots … Read more
:: Independent film, the new horizons. :: Why companies toss your spec script. :: Using dialect in your script, and how to go about it. :: “Descent”, what makes it genuinely scary. :: Three-act-structure, a review. :: How do you know if your screenplay is original? :: Characters in your script, when to name names. … Read more