Just about every screenplay ever has the same basic problems when you sit down and start working on it. Here’s a very handy and helpful video guide to recognizing those problems and, more importantly, dealing with them:
Category: Resources
40 years worth of TV writing experience and info, yours for the taking.
Diana Black: TV Writing Checklist Part 5
John Ostrander: Outrage for Outrageousness Sake
by John Ostrander
As of this writing, James Gunn has been fired as the director of the next Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. The reason? Some tweets he wrote ten years ago where he made light of, among other things, rape and pedophilia. Always good comedy material. (Yes, that’s sarcastic. I don’t want to be Gunned in my first column.) The director says he was trying to be outrageous and provocative and that they no longer represent who he is as a person, which is a good thing because he doesn’t come off as a very nice person. If you really feel the need to read them, you can find them here.
Disney/Marvel have cut all business ties with Gunn, the CEO sniffing, “The offensive attitudes and statements discovered on James’ Twitter feed are indefensible and inconsistent with our studio’s values and we have severed our business relationship with him.”
Peggy Bechko on Paring Down Your Prose
by Peggy Bechko
Attention spans appear to be peaking…or is that guttering? Whatever, fact of the matter is we writers have to pay very close attention to what we’re writing and to creating white space.
Wait, you say, that may well apply to screenwriters, but surely not to novelists?!
Um, both.
“Number Words and the Human Body”
Where do numbering systems come from…and why are they the way they are? Etymologist Extraordinaire Arika Okrent knows, and she isn’t afraid to share: