Who Are You Writing Your Screenplay For?
Hopefully your first answer is for yourself. Because you have something to say. You have a message, or a point of view you want to share. Or you thought of something funny and a good joke needs to be …
Buy the Saddle
An old friend of mine once told me something. I don’t know where he heard it, but it’s very true. “If one man says I’m a horse, I’ll ignore him. If a second man says I’m a horse, I’ll slug …
One Little Thing Changes Everything
I’m working on my latest draft of my steampunk screenplay. It’s draft 9. You never really finish rewriting, but that’s another story. I felt the need to change one thing. During the climatic fight/escape scene the leader of the group …
What Comes First, Character or Story?
Yes. On to the next blog post. Okay, I’ll expand. This is a question that keeps being asked of writers over and over again. There is no easy answer. I think it depends on the writer and the inspiration. Art …
Log Lines
What is a log line? Put simply, it is your elevator pitch. It is your story in three or four sentences. This is not an easy thing to do. You spend months, maybe even years, on your screenplay, then you …
Hunting Artifacts
No need for a whip and gun, that’s not the kind of artifacts we’re hunting today. The artifacts I’m talking about are created in the rewrite process. They appear from one draft of you story to the next. Sometimes, as …
Writing Scenes That don’t Exist
So after I wrote my last blog on Christine Conradt’s GLAWS presentation, I thought I’d check out her two articles in the two “Now Write” books. In, “Now Write! Screenwriting” she has an exercise called “The Scene That Doesn’t …
GLAWS Special Speaker Event: Christine Conradt
Less than twenty-four hours ago as I write this, I was attending Christine Conradt’s presentation on Creating Strong Female Characters. Going into this, my thought was, “how is creating a strong female character different than creating a strong male character?” …
Perfecting Your Premise
Back in September of last year, GLAWS’ monthly speaker event featured writer Art Holcomb. Mr. Holcomb has been a writer for fourty five years working in film, television, theater and comic books. The topic of this event: Perfecting Your Premise …
INTERVIEW: TONY TADARO
Over the course of this blog I have mentioned GLAWS, the Greater Los Angeles Writer’s Society, of which I am a member. GLAWS is a great organization of peers helping peers and professionals mentoring aspiring writers. I am in one …