Five lessons that saved my screenwriting career.
After my career collapsed in 2005 and my slow return to it around 2008 or so, I realized there were dozens of things I didn’t want to repeat.
Do we really need to raise the stakes?
Raising the stakes often misses the point.
What we really want is for the audience to care more deeply about the story’s outcome.
The questions you ask matter.
"How do I format slow motion in my screenplay?"
It sounds simple, right? But it's the wrong question.
Don't sleep on writing short films.
Writing shorts is a near-perfect laboratory for improving your screenwriting. Nearly everything you learn about feature writing applies to shorts.
Key decisions that make your screenwriting easier.
Here is a harsh truth: 99% of your passes are pre-destined. Here's why.
Scene generation: "What do we want to see?"
Given the characters, genre, situation, relationships, and the concepts we have established:
What do we want to see?
What motivates the characters in your screenplay?
Anxiety means well. Anxiety’s job is to protect us, after all. It’s just usually an incredibly unskilled and unproductive way to do it.
How to attack your scene transitions.
Nearly every screenplay has 100+ transitions from one scene to another. This can be a major area of stress with the reader. Don't let it be.
Strategies for the industry contraction.
I was back in Los Angeles for the first time in eight months. My first priority was to sit and talk with my agents.
This is what we discussed.
Choosing the point of view of a scene.
The narrative point of view is through whom we experience a story, scene, or moment. We get information as they do, and often, as a result, that is who we empathize with.
How to write a montage.
Don't let proper montage format sabotage your montage.
Five types of directors attached to your screenplay.
Not all directors are created equal.
While it's always great to hear kind things about our work, always know exactly how and why someone moves your project further toward production.