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Story coaching is the best, most efficient way to get better as a writer. It begins when a writer hires me for a specific project. They’ll tell me what they want to accomplish and what’s preventing them from executing it…
Question: Should I write a Story Map before I begin writing a draft? Answer: Sure, if you can. But you’re going to run into a problem. If you can’t tell your story in 75 words, you can’t tell your story.…
Story Maps are one of the greatest resources on ScreenplayHowTo. They provide a great way for a novice writer to get a handle on the many moving parts and information that’s included with a screenplay. Story Maps are wonderful tools. I…
READER: I noticed this in your about me section: “I’ve been hired for a variety of small rewrites and polishes, but none of my features have been produced.” Damn if even you haven’t gotten produced, this business must be really hard.…
Good screenplays have both world-building and story and they have them in the right balance. The WORLD of Star Wars has planets and aliens and mythology. You could tell any number of stories in the Star Wars Universe, as evidenced by…
Being a screenwriter isn’t just about writing a screenplay. You also need to know how to write other important stuff like treatments, synopses, one-pagers, and loglines.
If you’ve ever read a book on screenwriting, you’ve probably heard that adding camera movements to your script is a no-no. The reason for this is simple: novice writers overuse camera movements to the point that they distract the reader…
The majority of screenwriting books tell you that you should avoid using CUT TO: between scenes because it reeks of amateurish writing and quite frankly, it’s obvious that to go from one scene in a movie to the next, there…
For every successful screenwriter, there’s a unique story of how he or she made it over the wall. Each one is different, and no one’s journey can be duplicated by anyone else. Some had parents in the industry, some got…
