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 [...]
When Story Analyst Dan Calvisi published Story Maps: How to Write a GREAT Screenplay a few years ago, he presented screenwriters with a detailed look inside his own personalized method for breaking down a story. His unique approach to constructing a story in the grand tradition of Syd Field, Blake Snyder, and others, allowed any [...]
There’s no question, writing is rewriting. Quitting too early is the death of a script’s potential sale. Here are some tools I use to help me get my scripts to a polish as close to perfect as my imperfect self can accomplish: 1. Rewrite by Paul Chitlik If you’re writing a spec, you don’t want [...]
Writer’s Blocks 4 is a really cool program designed for all writers that need help shaping their ideas into a coherent structure. If you’re a writer whose organizational style involves the use of index cards, sticky notes or jotting your ideas randomly in a notepad, then read on. Whether you write books, movie scripts, research [...]
Persona is a great little program for either Windows or Mac computers, making it simple to create characters for novels, plays, scripts or any writing project, for that matter. It is straightforward and easy to use. You simply fill in blanks with information such as name, height, age, hair and eye color. There are 16 preset [...]
Happy Monday! The start of a week can be much like the start of a script. I can play on the rewrite playground forever, but starting a project is always the most difficult part for me. Over the years, I’ve asked my writer friends for advice on tools to help me not only get past my [...]
One of the biggest problems a script writer has is keeping track of all the elements in the story. Think about it; there are usually multiple characters, several locations, and if that weren’t enough, there needs to be a convincing arc for each character to follow as the story progresses. What should happen and where? [...]
As I hunted through my resources this weekend, I came across some screenwriting DVDs I’ve enjoyed and wanted to share with you. 1. The Dialogue DVD Series: This series of DVDs includes interviews of successful screenwriters talking craft, breaking in, and the films they love. I’m a big fan of crawling inside other writers’ heads [...]
Mid-April isn’t most studios’ first choice for bringing out a tentpole. But Universal may start a trend if it hits a home run with Oblivion, directed by Joseph Kosinski from his own comic book adventure. An intriguing mystery wrapped inside a stylish postapocalyptic scifi thriller, Oblivion offers Tom Cruise his best action role in years – [...]
