You have to get past thinking of them in terms of who would be willing to have sex with them. Go out in the street and look at ALL the women. Every single one of them has compelling dramatic conflict in their lives. Imagine that.
Read moreSTOP THAT
annerocious: Two spaces after a period looks very old-fashioned.
Read moreHOW TO STOP OVERWRITING YOUR DIALOGUE
It’s simple. We’re watching it. Develop your characters in such a way that even someone who has never seen True Blood can grasp what they are looking at here. If this doesn’t make sense, get out your notebook and write down everything you can tell about these two people and their relationship and their backstories…
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Two spaces after a period looks very old-fashioned.
Read moreLOGLINES I SUPPORT: Part One
A shit-hot pilot and a supermodel scientist banter until they crash land in a remote Andes village and die and Laverne Cox emerges from the wreckage and takes over on page 20.
Read moreDON’T BLEND IN
I read a lot of scripts that are perfectly competent, but accomplish nothing new. They might as well be movies from ten years ago with new character names and a different maguffin. If you are trying to get somewhere in a competition, the one thing you have on your side is that your story doesn’t…
Read more“BUT I NEED MY VOICEOVER”
99% of voiceover is a writer’s way of telling things to the reader that they haven’t figured out a way to show in action.
Read moredatassium: finally Here’s that awesome romcom plot you were looking for
Read moreGIVE ME A FLASHBACK, STAT
Not every flashback is as suspicious as an uneven mole. Not every flashback pegs you as a cheater. What are the rules for a good flashback? Excellent question. Firefly, pilot episode. Jams an entire catastrophic interstellar civil war into one quick, action packed sequence with suspense and disaster. It’s a whole story in itself. It…
Read moreWHY DIVERSITY BELONGS IN YOUR SCRIPT
Because of EVERYTHING. The fault of white people in my artistic community is that they, through no active deficiency of their own, take it for granted that the story is about them. The goal is actually to ensure that EVERYONE can take it for granted that the story is about them. As gifted, thoughtful and…
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