Writing Craft & Showbiz Career Info
Updated Daily
SIGN UP FOR THE FILM COURAGE NEWSLETTER https://filmcourage.substack.com In this Film Courage video interview filmmaker James Cullet Bressack shares his first experience going to a movie theater and what makes a compelling film. James Cullen Bressack is an American producer, director, and screenwriter. At the age of 18 he received critical attention from audiences and critics alike when he made...
Read more
Published 19 hours ago
BUY THE BOOK - THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX OFFICE: The Ultimate Guide to Film Distribution and Marketing for the Digital Era http://amzn.to/1vOsGzs Jon Reiss is a critically acclaimed filmmaker, author, and media strategist. His experience releasing his documentary feature, Bomb It, with a hybrid strategy was the inspiration for writing Think Outside the Box Office, the first step-by-step guide for...
Read more
Published 1 day ago
Merve Emre and Adam Dalva discuss how George Gissing’s The Odd Women defied both social and literary norms. | Lit Hub Criticism 2024 MacArthur Fellows Jericho Brown, Ling Ma, Jason Reynolds, and Juan Felipe Herrera, talk writing, book recommendations, and more. | Lit Hub Ed Simon on Sven Birkerts’ The Guttenberg Elegies and why reading […]...
Read more
Published 2 days ago
SIGN UP FOR THE FILM COURAGE NEWSLETTER https://filmcourage.substack.com Sammy Horowitz is an award winning action-actor, stuntman, playwright, and screenwriter from Chicago. Before moving to Hollywood, Sammy was a bouncer and doorman at nightclubs, an M.M.A. fighter, and eventually a full-time professional boxer who fought all over the country. Sammy is one of the only known stuntmen who has went on...
Read more
Published 2 days ago
You will never forget Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Land That Time Forgot," blared the trailers to this 1974 Amicus film starring Doug McClure.And you know what?The advertisements were truthful.I first saw The Land That Time Forgot in theaters in 1975 -- when I was only five years old -- and I have never, ever forgotten the adventurous Kevin Connor film. In fact, I affectionately count this disco...
Read more
Published 3 days ago
BUY THE BOOK - How To Write A Movie In 21 Days: The Inner Movie Method https://amzn.to/3xob1Vh Best-selling author and film consultant Viki King is a leading advisor to luminaries in the entertainment industry. Known for her warmth, and humor she appears often on CNN, NBC, ABC, BBC, as well as in hundreds of radio interviews. She has quick, insightful...
Read more
Published 3 days ago
SIGN UP FOR THE FILM COURAGE NEWSLETTER https://filmcourage.substack.com MORE VIDEOS WITH ADAM WILLIAM WARD https://bit.ly/2kB1CEF WATCH 'BAD ADVICE' https://tubitv.com/series/300010740/bad-advice WATCH 'WALLY GOT WASTED' https://tubitv.com/movies/564745/wally-got-wasted CONNECT WITH ADAM WILLIAM WARD https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3652101 https://www.instagram.com/adamwilliamward https://linktr.ee/adamwilliamward Adam is a Jewish-American born in Abington, Pennsylvania who grew up in Bucks County, PA. At age twelve his family relocated to Roseburg, Oregon; a new and unfamiliar...
Read more
Published 4 days ago
2024 MacArthur Fellows Jericho Brown, Ling Ma, Jason Reynolds, and Juan Felipe Herrera, talk writing, book recommendations, and more. | Lit Hub In Conversation “Why are aspiring writers convinced that ‘real’ writers don’t struggle?” Samina Ali provides some advice for confronting your writerly fears. | Lit Hub Craft Merve Emre and Adam Dalva discuss how […]...
Read more
Published 5 days ago
Last month, the MacArthur Foundation announced its latest fellowship class—unofficially known as the “Genius Grant,” the MacArthur Fellowship awards $800,000 “to extraordinarily talented and creative individuals as an investment in their potential.” Literary Hub caught up with four of the 2024 winners—Jericho Brown, Ling Ma, Jason Reynolds, and Juan Felipe Herrera—to ask about their cultural […]...
Read more
Published 5 days ago
This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here. Every year, I teach a writing workshop in the Stanford Continuing Studies Program. Called “No Critics, No Fear,” the class coincides with NaNoWriMo in November and provides everything an aspiring author needs to stay motivated: daily writing prompts; live craft lectures; a discussion board to […]...
Read more
Published 5 days ago
About The TITAN Awards The TITAN Awards is a global, prestigious screenwriting contest whereby material competes against its own kind for as long as possible over the course of a contest cycle. Horror feature vs ... Read more The post An Interview with 2024 TITAN Awards Winner Thomas Oliver Hand appeared first on Industrial Scripts®....
Read more
Published 5 days ago
Conflict is the heartbeat of storytelling, providing the tension, drama, and intrigue that capture our attention. Every great story begins with conflict, whether it’s an internal battle within a character’s ... Read more The post How to Build Strong Conflict in a Story appeared first on Industrial Scripts®....
Read more
Published 5 days ago
If you had asked me yesterday about this fixed expression, I would have said that when worse comes to worst is the correct form. However, when I stumbled upon a text that used the phrase when worst comes to worst, I wondered if my assumption was correct. The trouble with assumptions is that you can… The post Worst Comes to...
Read more
Published 5 days ago
BUY THE BOOK - OPENING WEEKEND: An Insider's Look at Marketing Hollywood's Hits and Flops https://amzn.to/3APylgR After starting his career in 1983 as a trailer editor and producer at famed advertising boutique Intralink, Jim Fredrick went on to serve as president of marketing at Castle Rock Entertainment, senior vice president of creative advertising at Warner Bros. and executive vice president...
Read more
Published 5 days ago
The Dos Passos Prize for Literature, awarded by Longwood University in Virginia, has announced its shortlist of five impressive writers who are in the running for 2024’s prize. The award honors a prolific American writer who displays “characteristics of John Dos Passos’s writing: an intense and original exploration of specifically American themes, an experimental approach […]...
Read more
Published 6 days ago
Casie Dodd on why indie bookstores and small presses make up the backbone of the literary ecosystem. | Lit Hub Bookstores Juhea Kim talks to Jane Ciabattari about isolation, ballet, and writing: “At the risk of selling my novel short, I’ll say this: real life is more dramatic than fiction when it comes to ballet.” […]...
Read more
Published 6 days ago
Juhea Kim’s first novel, Beasts of a Little Land, which focuses on a young courtesan named Jade in early twentieth century in Korea, during the struggle for independence from Japan and before its historic divide, was an international best seller. Kim, who was born in Incheon, Korea, raised in Portland from age nine, received a […]...
Read more
Published 6 days ago
With over 40 years in the film industry, Craig Caton-Largent is a legendary visual effects artist and the current Chair of 3D Animation & VFX at New York Film Academy (NYFA) Los Angeles. He has worked on over 100 films, creating some of Hollywood's most iconic creatures, including the Slimer ghost in Ghostbusters (1984), the penguins in Batman Returns (1992),...
Read more
Published 6 days ago
Jesse Harris started his filmmaking career early, writing and directing his first feature when he was 17. He opted against college and used the money to fund his feature that he wrote and directed, which was eventually picked up for US theatrical distribution and by HBO Europe. In 2007, to support other young filmmakers, Jesse founded NFFTY (National Film Festival...
Read more
Published 7 days ago
0:00 - If You Don't Want To Write It, Who Wants To Read It? 13:36 - I've Written 4 Novels (All Over 80 Thousand Words)... Here's How I Begin 31:23 - Author Reveals How Scrivener Speeds Up Her Writing Process 43:01 - Why Writers Need To Write Bad Pages 59:38 - Why I Don't Always Follow Story Structure When Writing...
Read more
Published 8 days ago
All About Prologues Every word counts in a story and first impressions matter. Traditionally, a prologue is an introductory chapter that sets the scene, tone and genre of your novel. But should you write one? The million-dollar question! Believe it or not, using a prologue can be quite controversial in the social media age. So,… Read More »Pros & Cons Of...
Read more
Published 9 days ago
WATCH 'AMERICAN HOMEBOY' - https://chelatv.com WATCH 'AMERICAN HOMEBOY' TRAILER https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-hzBqiB0kk MORE VIDEOS WITH BRANDON LORAN MAXWELL https://tinyurl.com/auc44vrs Brandon Loran Maxwell is a writer, speaker, prize winning essayist, film director, and entrepreneur. His writings and commentary have appeared at The Hill, Salon, Townhall, The Washington Examiner, The Oregonian, and The Foundation For Economic Education, among others. In 2022, his writings were...
Read more
Published 9 days ago
Becoming a mother was the motivation one freelance writer needed to abandon the toxic hustle culture by which she defined “success”....
Read more
Published 11 days ago
With social media fragmenting, I’m bringing back my old “You Tell Me” Wednesday discussions to try to get good old fashioned blog conversations going. If you’re reading in a feed reader or via email, please click through to the post to leave a public comment and join the discussion! News broke this week that HarperCollins has struck […]...
Read more
Published 12 days ago
An Author’s Note can be the most direct way to communicate your book’s themes to editors, marketers, librarians, teachers, and readers....
Read more
Published 12 days ago
Fronting in writing and grammar is a simple but effective tool you can use to modify a sentence. Put simply, it moves parts like an object, adverb, or complement to the very beginning of a sentence. Instead of following the standard subject-verb-object structure, it moves the focus of a sentence to the most important part,… The post How To Use...
Read more
Published 13 days ago
Like love and creativity, the best things in life are intangible. It’s the same with intuition, which the tarot helps us access and develop....
Read more
Published 13 days ago
Over the past year, a debate over whether writers should pay for editing prior to seeking publication has (somewhat inexplicably from my vantage point) become a hot topic, particularly on Threads. Some prominent published authors are on the record more or less calling anyone who pays for editing a total rube or worse. Before we […]...
Read more
Published 13 days ago
Creating relatable characters makes a story memorable. Audiences love characters who feel real. Peter Parker, for example, is not just a hero; he’s a person with struggles. He worries about ... Read more The post How to Create Relatable Characters Your Audience Will Love appeared first on Industrial Scripts®....
Read more
Published 14 days ago
All About Kish?tenketsu If you learned storytelling in the West, you may not have heard of kish?tenketsu. Whilst some literature and screenwriting degrees may include it, most prioritise what I call ‘the transformative arc’. The most obvious transformative arc is, of course, The Hero’s Journey. A protagonist must go from ‘zero to hero’ while challenging… Read More »An Introduction To Kish?tenketsu,...
Read more
Published 15 days ago
Can one bad concept, executed poorly, scuttle an entire movie? That was a question I asked myself 30 years ago.And indeed, that's the primary question to ask regarding the seventh feature film to boast the Star Trek name, 1994's Generations.As Trekkers no doubt recall, Generations offers the irresistible lure of combining two generations of franchise characters and two exceedingly popular casts. The film's prologue is set in...
Read more
Published 15 days ago
As difficult as it is to believe, 2024 marks the 40th anniversary of Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), the horror film that introduced the world to dream monster Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund). Historically-speaking, A Nightmare on Elm Street is significant not merely for commencing a franchise that came to include five direct theatrical sequels, but a two-season TV anthology, Freddy’s Nightmares (1988 – 1990), a...
Read more
Published 16 days ago
The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974) hold up beautifully as examples of th disaster film all these years later. Each of those Irwin Allen-produced films concerns more than chaos and wreckage. These are films about the human spirit, and the drive that compels us to keep fighting when all hope seems lost.The genre hit a speed bump, however, with 1974’s Earthquake.The 50...
Read more
Published 17 days ago
One author discovers that when it comes to heavily-researched historical fiction, one’s ducks should be in a row before tackling NaNoWriMo....
Read more
Published 18 days ago
With social media fragmenting, I’m bringing back my old “You Tell Me” Wednesday discussions to try to get good old fashioned blog conversations going. If you’re reading in a feed reader or via email, please click through to the post to leave a public comment and join the discussion! When some writers I know get stuck, they […]...
Read more
Published 18 days ago
When you need to describe pain in writing, relying on adjective phrases alone often isn’t enough. Pain is complex because it is more than just a feeling. It’s a mixture of emotional and physical sensations that lie unseen below the surface. That’s why metaphors can be useful to make pain more real for readers. They… The post How To Describe...
Read more
Published 19 days ago
We do not live without a persistent undercurrent of questions, both tiny and tremendous. Doubt is part of us, so let us make peace with it....
Read more
Published 19 days ago
Academics or experts writing for a broader audience than peers should consider framing complex facts through a personal lens....
Read more
Published 20 days ago
The percentage of movie screenwriters who are also producers on movies has been growing steadily over the past century but has started to wane in the past decade....
Read more
Published 20 days ago
