screenwriting

Discussion of the sometimes-uneasy balance between the writing process itself and the finished product. What happens when you're having so much fun with your characters and story that you don't want to finish writing?

"Without the hard work and discipline you'll never finish anything, but without indulging yourself in your ideas and dreams you'll never have anything worth finishing."

When industry feedback tells you to make substantial changes to your story, how much change can you make before losing the very heart of your story? Discussion on feedback and story evolution.

Musings on where story/creative ideas come from and when/how they come to you.

November is known as NaNoWriMo, where you write a novel in a month. But April is Script Frenzy, where writers are challenged to write a movie script. "Script Frenzy is an international writing event in which participants attempt the daring feat of writing 100 pages of scripted material in the month of April. Every writer who completes the goal of 100 pages is victorious and awe-inspiring."

Preparing yourself to dive back in and rewrite a script can sometimes be daunting. This time, I prepared myself by seeking inspiration classic plots.

Loglines are hugely important to any screenwriter, but we all hate writing them. Here, we take a logline and hone it down using copywriting principles to create a strong, focussed logline capable of attracting the right attention.

Blade Runner is one of the most influential cult sci-fi films of all time, even though it was a box-office flop on release. The troubled story of it's different incarnations over the years reveals some intriguing insights into how a strong script uses ambiguity to create mystery and how unanswered questions can give a film a lingering potency long after the final frame.

With Diablo Cody becoming well established as a blogging success story that led to an award winning script for Juno, I look at the possible strategies for writers to increase their reach without resorting to stripping!

With the 2008 screenwriting competitions gearing up, it's time to dust off those how-to books and finish that script. Kimota has a look as some of the best resources he has come across amongst the mountains of product aimed at amateur scriptwriters.

Screenwriting professor and consultant Drew Yanno discusses the importance of the final act in his book "The Third Act -- Writing a Great Ending to Your Screenplay,"
I could have told him that and I’m no professor of anything. Well ok I could have told him it is important but what is a great ending?