“Before you start writing any screenplay, make a playlist of music that feels like the movie. It’s a fundamental part of my process….
“… Most of these songs would never be in your final movie. Rather, you are assembling music that reminds you of the feeling you’re trying to create. More crucially, you want music that […]

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“… Producing a web series is a lot of work. But because I got to set the goal, I also got to ensure that my efforts were in alignment with my goal. I discovered I love producing. I also love owning and controlling my own material, not to mention the feeling of controlling my own […]

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Neely Swanson interviewed 2010 WGA Access Project honoree Melody Fox about her “extraordinarily chilling” Sci-Fi pilot script, “Firefall.”
“… I like to start with the real science and if I considered these ideas as possible truths they became a jumping off point for me in developing the series. I thought, what if some sort of primitive […]

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“… It’s a fine line between something original, and something familiar enough for executives and audiences. Like, it’s SUCH a fine line that it practically exists in a quantum state. Schroedinger’s pitch. And it’s just as hard to pitch an original cop show as it is to pitch a familiar enough genre show. It’s just […]

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“… We had a fantastic response to our first foray into the podcast world, which we took as ample encouragement to continue. In this episode, we talk about the upcoming London Screenwriters’ Festival, earning a living as a writer, the importance of a script’s first ten pages (inspired by Red Planet entries), and there’s reviews […]

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“… It is necessary to understand that a story is nothing but a series of items of information. The story teller informs the listener about persons and events…. The best approach is to ask: what is essential?…”
Go to Scott W. Smith’s place …

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“… Think about the endings of films and books that stay with you. What is that extra something they have that makes them stand out from all the hundreds and thousands of stories out there?…
“… As a storyteller the best thing you can do for your own writing technique is to make that list and […]

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“… All 13 episodes are broken.
“A writer’s draft of 313 is being written.
“I am currently working on my draft of 312.
“Adam Arkin is prepping 311….”
Go to Kurt Sutter’s place …

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“If you’re having a hard time finding a character’s voice, get him talking about something unrelated to the scene at hand.
“Let your hero knock back a beer with his college roommate. Have your corporate spy meet-cute a potential suitor at a ski lodge. Pick situations that couldn’t possibly fit in your actual movie. You just […]

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Article on the ScreenwritingU blog — 15 Ways to Sell a Screenplay Online.
Well worth reading and using. 

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Denis Faye interviewed writer-producer Henry Bromell (Rubicon, Carnivale, Homicide: Life on the Street, Northern Exposure) at the WGA West site.
“… You don’t start writing until you’ve got really great characters; strong, complicated characters. And then you keep trying to find it in the writing to go along with them….”
Go to interview …

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“… Name me a comedy writer who got his name above the title of any play or movie he wrote. Or a screenwriter who the studios and directors were forbidden to rewrite. You’ve got to be pretty good and pretty successful to achieve that kind of clout. For God sakes, the man has a Broadway […]

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“… It was the very definition of a guilty pleasure - a half-hour soap opera/anthology series that mostly focused on the sexual and romantic relationships of teens and college-age characters. Each episode usually had three storylines with different characters and those stories continued across several shows.
“It wasn’t great writing by any means….
“… This is a […]

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At the WGA West site, Dylan Callaghan interviewed Rob Reiner and long-time writing partner Andrew Scheinman about their latest film, Flipped.
“… We had a great time doing this. The most difficult thing was, as with adapting any book you really like, paring it down to make it a film. There were a lot of really […]

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“… I think for most writers, the key to having a happy career is to keep your expenses down so that you can afford to take the most challenging job rather than the best paying job. Or so you can write a great spec pilot rather than having to write corporate videos in order to […]

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