Writing Craft & Showbiz Career Info
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Our two new books... STORY QUESTIONS is currently 10% off! - https://payhip.com/b/ZTvq9 and 17 Steps To Writing A Great Main Character - https://payhip.com/b/kCZGd A lawyer turned producer and studio executive, Peter M. Hoffman built a career that bridged the creative and the corporate, the visionary and the pragmatic. As the founder and CEO of Carolco and Seven Arts Entertainment, he...
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Published 20 hours ago
I crunched 25 years of trade press coverage, ticket sales across 36 countries and Netflix's global charts to work out what a German breakout hit would need, and why it would lift the whole industry....
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Published 1 day ago
Last week, I had the great pleasure of being contacted by WatchGuide, an independent German film & series community (online since 2022, 1,600+ reviews, one editorial 0-10 "Watcher score" per title), where the authors link to this blog (and the site even sent me a nifty badge; on the right sidebar!). I've had a great time digging into some of the Watchguide movie...
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Published 1 day ago
This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Literary History newsletter—sign up here. Famously, O. Henry (the pen name of William Sydney Porter), author of “The Gift of the Magi,” and one of the most celebrated short story writers of his generation, and whose...
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Published 1 day ago
Where does the “literariness” in literary biography belong? With the book’s subject—or its author? Traditionally, it’s attached to both, and to a third element too. Literary biography also cares about the writing its subjects produce, and has done so ever...
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Published 1 day ago
Each day, my dog, Helgi, and I walked about eight miles. We started on Wymore Street, in the heart of Elliott, my neighborhood, and strode past the baseball field with its weird sign, past the city workers’ fueling station and...
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Published 1 day ago
I wake up on a Tuesday cloaked in light. The light isn’t simply radiating off me. It is spitting and sparking. It feels like a second skin. My husband begins to stir next to me. I can tell he is...
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Published 1 day ago
Writing for The Richmond Times Dispatch, movie critic Carole Kass termed Vamp (1986) “sleazy, tawdry and disgusting.” Oddly, those are some of the very reasons I enjoy this film so much. The film is absolutely all those things, and, I would argue, delightfully so.But the reason Vamp worked in 1986, and still (largely) works four decades later is that the film boasts a goofy big-hearted sense...
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Published 2 days ago
Our two new books... STORY QUESTIONS: How To Unlock Your Story One Question At A Time - https://payhip.com/b/ZTvq9 and 17 Steps To Writing A Great Main Character - https://payhip.com/b/kCZGd WATCH 'SITE' TRAILER https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kV8fZvBVPLU An accomplished WGA screenwriter, feature director, producer and Emmy-recognized editor, Jason Eric Perlman has collaborated on over 20 feature films since completing USC Graduate Cinema. He has...
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Published 2 days ago
Once you notice that the names at the top of a movie poster rarely match the faces beneath, you start to wonder why it happens so often. The Film Data Scientist explains all...
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Published 4 days ago
Short Film Mistakes Writing short films is exceptionally difficult. In recent years, many film festivals have started to prioritise short films that are ten minutes or under. Telling a story in such a short timeframe is a big challenge. As a script editor, I’ve spent a lot of time in the world of short films.… Read More »Top 5 Mistakes Writers...
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Published 4 days ago
The first time I read the Odyssey, I was sixteen years old. The fantastical creatures, the alien cultures, and the wily hero’s desperate search for home were all thrilling to me. I felt an uncanny familiarity: with the characters, yes,...
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Published 4 days ago
A few summers ago, while the Supreme Court was deciding whether or not abortion would remain legal, I was writing a novel about Bobby Kennedy. During the day, I was a woman in the twenty-first century whose body was endlessly,...
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Published 4 days ago
Dawn touches the sky with her rosy fingers, and I realize that I forgot to put the bin out. I turn on the radio, and the news is full of stories about powerful men with fragile egos catapulting the world...
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Published 4 days ago
Our two new books... STORY QUESTIONS: How To Unlock Your Story One Question At A Time - https://payhip.com/b/ZTvq9 and 17 Steps To Writing A Great Main Character - https://payhip.com/b/kCZGd Glenn Gers was a professional writer of movies and television for 25 years. His credits include theatrical features including FRACTURE (2007) and MAD MONEY (2008), no-budget indies like DISFIGURED (2008), TV...
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Published 4 days ago
There’s a well-known Howard Hawks quote that goes: ‘A good movie is three good scenes and no bad scenes’. Casting aside its direct meaning, it also hits on an interesting ... Read more The post Fixing the Worst Scene in Your Screenplay (exclusive ebook) appeared first on Industrial Scripts®....
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Published 5 days ago
When editors provide resources for contributors to support anthologies, they can help increase engagement and market visibility in ways that matter....
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Published 5 days ago
I collected 57 published accounts of filmmakers opening their books on marketing and release spend, from a $1,000 theatrical opening to a $500,000 campaign that returned nearly $80 million....
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Published 6 days ago
Google used access to digital copies of books via Google Books, the Google Play bookstore, and Google Scholar to train its Gemini model....
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Published 6 days ago
The study was performed by Edison Research, a leader in audio market research, and commissioned by Spoken, an AI audiobook production company....
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Published 6 days ago
Chicken Soup for the Soul changed their spine design after a recent merchandise giveaway crowdsourced how their books were being displayed....
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Published 6 days ago
Adult fiction grew 5.7 percent, while adult nonfiction fell 5.8 percent. Self-help had the biggest decline of all, about 24 percent...
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Published 6 days ago
In the early 1900s, David Innes (McClure) and inventor Abner Perry (Peter Cushing) test the doctor’s experimental “high-calibration drilling machine,” the Iron Mole, which can burrow deep into “the bowels of the Earth.” Something goes wrong on the initial journey, however, and Iron Mole emerges not on the far side of a hill, but deep within the Earth’s core, in a heretofore...
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Published 6 days ago
Our two new books... STORY QUESTIONS is currently 10% off! - https://payhip.com/b/ZTvq9 and 17 Steps To Writing A Great Main Character - https://payhip.com/b/kCZGd Brandon Violette was most recently the Head Writer for RoboGobo and Pupstruction at Disney Television Animation and the Co-Creator/Head Writer of CoComelon Lane (Moonbug/Netflix), one of Netflix's top-performing preschool series. His writing credits span hit shows including...
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Published 6 days ago
A key character in Futureworld (1975) informs another character that the problem at Delos -- the amusement park of the future -- is "the memory" of the nightmarish events that occurred in Western World, or for viewer purposes, the harrowing events of the great sci-fi movie Westworld (1973).The very same problem might be ascribed to this less-than-satisfactory cinematic sequel directed by Richard T. Heffron and starring Peter Fonda and Blythe Danner. ...
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Published 7 days ago
Transitioning from one scene to another may seem trivial, but it’s crucial to help orient readers and conduct them smoothly through the story....
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Published 7 days ago
I followed the careers of 1,765 directors of top grossing films to work out who gets another go after a first film that doesn't quite land, and who doesn't....
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Published 8 days ago
Our new book... STORY QUESTIONS: How To Unlock Your Story One Question At A Time https://payhip.com/b/ZTvq9 John Vorhaus is best known for his comedy-writing classic, The Comic Toolbox: How to be Funny Even if You’re Not. He has taught and trained writers in 37 countries on five continents at last count, and created TV shows of his own in Nicaragua,...
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Published 8 days ago
Our two new books... STORY QUESTIONS is currently 10% off! - https://payhip.com/b/ZTvq9 and 17 Steps To Writing A Great Main Character - https://payhip.com/b/kCZGd Blake Ridder is a filmmaker, writer, director and actor, born in Shanghai and raised in the United Kingdom from the age of nine. He began acting in 2017, then wrote and directed his first short a year...
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Published 10 days ago
How To Get Better At Plotting What if you could get better at plotting in less than 60 seconds? Authors and screenwriters are forever looking for the secret to plotting. They buy books, sign up for courses, or watch endless YouTube videos. Meanwhile, one of the best plotting lessons around is hiding in plain sight before… Read More »#1 Quick Tip For...
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Published 11 days ago
A 20-year-old just directed the number one film in the world, and it feels like cinema is finally having a youth movement... Unfortunately, the data says the exact opposite is happening....
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Published 11 days ago
For an anecdote (“You won’t believe what I saw!”) to grow into an impactful story, a surprise element isn’t enough—real change needs to occur....
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Published 12 days ago
Our two new books... STORY QUESTIONS is currently 10% off! - https://payhip.com/b/ZTvq9 and 17 Steps To Writing A Great Main Character - https://payhip.com/b/kCZGd Nick Morton has produced nearly 30 movies / tv series which include RAY (Jamie Fox, Regina King, Kerry Washington), SAHARA (Mathew McConaughey, Penelope Cruz, Steve Zahn) and COOPER'S BAR (Rhea Seehorn). Nick is also a standup comedian,...
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Published 12 days ago
Hannah Selinger is a James Beard Award–nominated lifestyle writer and mother of two. Valley of the Moms is her first work of fiction....
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Published 13 days ago
Analyst Michael Cader reports some of this decline is driven by Penguin Random House and HarperCollins pulling back on deals....
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Published 13 days ago
Insight Editions is starting a line of horror-inspired books in collaboration with filmmaker Eli Roth and his media company The Horror Section....
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Published 13 days ago
As of July 7, the 70 percent royalty rate can be earned for all ebooks priced up to $12.99. The prior royalty rate for books priced over $9.99 was 35 percent....
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Published 13 days ago
I studied the data behind 2,271 movies to reveal why Hollywood's big budget fare is often so poor. It's not random but the the inevitable consequence of five rules Hollywood Execs have to live by....
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Published 13 days ago
Obsession: A Disquieting Commentary on a Popular TropeGuest Post by Jonas Schwartz-OwenRemember those beloved ’80s teen comedies, where Lloyd Dobler blares his boombox outside his ex-girlfriend’s window despite her breaking up with him, or the geek has sex with a passed-out prom queen? Hilarity ensues - until the hangover of hindsight kicks in and we realize these “charming” moments were...
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Published 14 days ago
Should authors use Substack for their newsletter? It depends on your purpose—strengthening ties with existing readers, or reaching new ones....
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Published 14 days ago
Our two new books... STORY QUESTIONS is currently 10% off! - https://payhip.com/b/ZTvq9 and 17 Steps To Writing A Great Main Character - https://payhip.com/b/kCZGd After beginning his career as a graphic artist, Ron quickly realized his true passion was storytelling. That realization led him to Loyola Marymount University, where he pursued a graduate degree in screenwriting—and before graduating, sold his first...
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Published 14 days ago
Our two new books... STORY QUESTIONS is currently 10% off! - https://payhip.com/b/ZTvq9 and 17 Steps To Writing A Great Main Character - https://payhip.com/b/kCZGd Joe Burke is an indie filmmaker and actor best known for his new award-winning movie Burt, Four Dogs, Another Cancer Movie, House Sitting and more. As an actor, he has appeared in numerous national commercials and television...
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Published 16 days ago
Since it is July 4, 2026, I thought it might be an opportune to remember America's Bicentennial celebration of 1976....50 years agoI remember the occasion, five decades ago, well. I was six years old, and the Bicentennial -- the 200th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence -- was all the craze, all over the country. I was in Kindergarten at...
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Published 17 days ago
Writing A Mystery Writing a mystery is HARD. I’ve published ten novels now, many of them crime fiction. However, any genre in any medium can benefit from a mystery component. Police procedurals and domestic noir are the key subgenres that use mystery components. There have been over two hundred years of detective novels, plus modern… Read More »How Mystery Works: 7...
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Published 18 days ago
