It often takes an outside voice to help you get where you want to be.  In my painting class, I was struggling to paint a Paris subway platform. You could barely see the electrical cables and dark rails at the bottom, several people waiting in front of two huge posters, a guy walking by on the right, and, on the sides, the station name in blue and white tile. It was going pretty well and I’d painted some good parts, but the overall was not working.  I wasn’t depressed about my ability. I just didn’t like the painting and could not figure out how to solve a problem, that, no ..read more

In Screenwriting 100, the first thing you learn is that the main character changes. They end the story in a far different place, personality-wise and character-wise from where they started. “Your character’s gotta have an arc.” is what the teachers say. I say it too. Except for AIR. At the beginning, the main character always has an interior character problem that they solve by the end. Except for AIR In A FEW GOOD MEN, Tom Cruise worships his dead father, who was Attorney General of the United States… compared to his father, Tom feels he’s a mediocre attorney. At the end, after he grows up, h ..read more

Like, f’rinstance: character names! Bob and Todd. Sally and Sarah. Virginia and Veronica. Sauron and Saruman!! Here’s an image that’s intensely confusing — a map showing the three Superstates in George Orwell’s novel 1984. Oceania, Eurasia, Eastasia. (two of which are hella difficult to tell apart, but that’s another conversation). It’s just a map. How difficult could that be to get right? A map. Simple enough: a color for each Superstate. Hard to mess up?  Think again. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1 ..read more

The 7 Deadly Sins list (See Handouts! Free!) is a picky little thing. Ignore at your peril, gentle reader. Profit from this wee excerpt from the superb The Girl with the Deep Blue Eyes by multiple-Edgar winner Lawrence Block.  ***** He shook his head. “Got a private investigator’s license, got to know the sheriff, and when we needed somebody with no local ties to play a part and wear a wire, I got the job.” “And that was when, a couple of days ago?”  “There was a job before that,” he said, and started to tell her about the auto dealer. ***** This should’ve been: “There was ..read more

In 2008, Michael Wiese agreed to publish my book. At the time, I had no idea how much Your Screenplay Sucks! would change my life. Michael died last week at his home in England. This blog exists because of the book. I was invited to go to China, France, and England because of the book. I’ve made friends, earned money, had fun, and helped writers all over the world because Michael gave my book the nod. He was a gentleman and always supportive. He heard me speak at a film festival in Albuquerque and, at lunch after, gave me some of the finest encouragement of my life. His thoughtful wo ..read more

To be a good writer, you must do two things. 1.) Master the craft. 2.) Have something to say. That’s it! End of lesson. No really, that’s it. Like Ferris Bueller at the end of the movie, “You’re still here? It’s over. Go home. Go.” It is just those two steps. But, getting through Step 1 takes a gigantic, colossal, metric ton giant pile-o-work. Like a painter nailing the composition, mixing colors to get the correct blue green, or figuring out how to deal with light, and on and on, the control required to smoothly juggle those balls takes years to achieve. Mastering the craft is in some ways th ..read more

Story structure is story structure. What works has worked for a long, long time. Even children’s books have a hero with a problem, an Inciting Incident, Act breaks, a Midpoint, and an All is Lost moment, just like what’s playing at the OmniPlex or computer screen near you! The Cat In The Hat is 61 pages. Double that and pretend it’s a feature script. Remember it was written in 1957 when scripts were 120 pages… Page 1. The hero and his sister, Sally, are at home and already have a problem. It’s raining and they can’t go out to play. There’s no backstory. They WANT something. They want ONE THING ..read more

When I was rewriting my first script, THE WOLVES OF WILLOUGHBY CHASE, I had next to no idea what I was doing. There was the draft, three hole punched, in a three ring binder… and I was struggling to figure out what the hell to do next. To keep myself out of trouble, I made up a rule… I would read each page out loud, three times, before I could turn to the next page. If I made a single change, even a comma, I would have to start back at the first read. Often I would get to the last sentence of the third read, make a change and begin all over again. It was a silly rule and mineblowingly tedious ..read more

I’m enjoying Carry On, Jeeves, a collection of Bertie Wooster short stories by P.G. Wodehouse. “Without The Option” is one of the best. At the end, when Jeeves explains the sublime way he vanquished the opponent, his victory depends on a gigantic coincidence. To bring you up to speed, Bertie tries to help his friend Oliver (beholden to his Aunt Vera for 100% of his financial support) out of a romantic jam by suggesting he steal a policeman’s hat. A reasonable solution to most problems! Naturally, Oliver is thrown into jail for thirty days. If hair-trigger Aunt Vera finds out, she’ll cut him of ..read more

Do you have an amateur’s point of view or a professional’s? One way to tell: “How do you react to notes?” A TV producer-director friend, who’s directed hundreds and hundreds of hours of television, comes across a lot of writers. A lot of beginning writers. A lot of intermediate writers. A lot of professionals. He recently told me he no longer reads scripts by non-pros. “If they’re not professional, all they want is praise.” He stopped wasting his time. There’s always that straw that knocks the camel into the dung heap. For my buddy, this was it… “I read the script by this guy. It was terrible ..read more