For those who’ve followed my writing on Balls of Steel, you know how I love crawling into my characters’ heads. This week, I want to share with you a FREE download to help you find plot points that fit with your characters’ story arcs! Get your FREE Structure Grid of Character Development and Plot as [...]
Recent Articles
Making Everyone on Earth Happy All At Once: Writing Summer Blockbusters
There’s a debate raging now about whether or not the actors who play the superheroes in hit franchises are worth as much as the brand. Would we accept Chris Pine as Tony Stark or is Robert Downey, Jr. the only actor to pull off Iron Man? Mark Ruffalo was great as Bruce Banner in The [...]
The Scoggins Report: May 2013 Pitch Market Scorecard
The Scoggins Report by Jason Scoggins & Cindy Kaplan May 13, 2013 May 2013 Pitch Market Scorecard As our tifosi know, there’s nothing we like better than digging around in the data to find hidden patterns. We found a good one for you this week — glance at the Overall Pitch Numbers grid, below. 2013’s lagging a [...]
Guerrilla Screenwriting: The Demise of the Spec Script Market and the Rise of Pre-Branded Entertainment
To kick things off, I’d like to talk a little bit about the world of comic books and graphic novels, and why Hollywood producers like them so much. With its combination of words and visuals in one attractive package, a comic book can be a great sales tool when pitching your project to movie studios [...]
Legally Speaking, It Depends: Targeting Film Festivals
With this week’s starting up of the Festival de Cannes film festival season is said to be in. But with at last count over 4,000 film festivals every year it’s always festival season. Some festivals disappear, never to return, while new ones are popping up all the time. Pick any theme or a film-loving community [...]
Script Symbology
The upcoming column in Script Magazine called Script Symbology is about the study and application of symbols and symbolism to scripts. While there are so-called movie symbologists (Tom Hanks in The Da Vinci Code comes to mind) to our knowledge there exists no ongoing research, discussion or study of the application of symbols and symbolism [...]
‘On Becoming A Man’ Goes to Cannes Film Festival
When I speak at screenwriting conferences, I often remind people to look to their left and then to their right. The people sitting next to you are the ones you should be networking with, not just the speakers. Now I have proof. Meet Rebecca Norris and Kevin Resnick, filmmakers on their way to Cannes Film Festival [...]
Behind the Lines with DR: The Handshake with Sam Peckinpah
I can recall only three times in my life when I’ve felt weak in the knees. One was on my wedding day. I’d made my walk to the front of the church. Then, as I turned and gazed back across all those over-dressed guests stacked in the pews of Boston’s Old South Church, I saw [...]
TV Writer Podcast 076 – Mark Verheiden (Hemlock Grove, Battlestar Galactica, Smallville)
Are you a sci fi fan? Then you are certain to love this week’s interview with Mark Verheiden, EP of Hemlock Grove on Netflix! Mark is a veteran of sci fi in several forms: TV, features, and comics. Click image to play video; more details are below. Mark Verheiden is an executive producer of the [...]
Story Location, Life Location: Where is Your Character Going?
Today I want to talk about the importance of location, both in screenplays and in life. We behave differently in different places, and so do our characters. Travelling abroad, we speak to people we wouldn’t necessarily speak to, face fears we wouldn’t normally face, and get in touch with aspects of ourselves we wouldn’t normally [...]
