Action Lines It's The Intention That Matters We ask ourselves: what is the emotion we want to evoke? What information do we want to impart, or what visual do we want to reveal? Put simply, what is the intention?
Story The Concept Is King This is a concept-driven industry now. For better or for worse. The concept should be unique but just as important: the unique thing should be what generates conceptually unified scenes.
Action Lines It's your movie. Put the reader in the audience If we can get the reader to see the images and feel the emotions, we can transmit our enthusiasm and excitement for the project to them.
Character Finding The Core Belief: The Impact of the Flat-Arc Protagonist Stories where the protagonist remains steadfast in their beliefs and, in doing so, changes everyone around them. This is called in some circles... "The flat-arc protagonist."
The Business How To Incorporate Screenplay Notes From Friends, Writers Groups, and Others. This week is a different kind of development challenge. What to do with notes from friends, family, other writers, coverage, contests, and any other input you get from the various sources.
The Mental Battle Navigating Screenplay Development Without Getting Fired. Early in my screenwriting career, I was insecure, combative, and a pain to work with. Here is how I turned that around.
Structure Exposition: Find The Emotional Connection In Your Screenwriting The early challenges of sloppy exposition are due mainly to a lack of confidence and trust. Which is also kind of the bad news. It takes time to develop those two things.
Action Lines Make Your Screenplay More Readable: Write Vertically Put simply, writing vertically refers to making choices that push the reader's eyes DOWN the page more often than they go ACROSS the page.
Story Navigating the Rewrite Process: Finding New Perspectives There's nothing magical about the rewrite. It's the same as writing. So don't overcomplicate it, and don't let it intimidate you.
Structure Five Phases of Feature Development I left my last agents at Paradigm over a disagreement about two spec scripts. I liked them. They didn't.
Character The Protagonist's Most Important Trait: Resilience. By the end of your story, your protagonist should demonstrate resilience. I know, I know. How interesting could it be if every protagonist had this exact same trait? It turns out, it's very interesting.
The Business The When And The How Of Landing An Agent. Getting representation is a process, like most things, dominated by economics. That is, the allocation of limited resources. Yours and theirs.