Advice — advice

Most writers end up writing at least twice as many scenes as needed to produce a compelling story. One skill that defines a good writer is the ability to know which scenes to keep and which ones to kill off. As a plot consultant, I developed two visual plot tools to help writers select those scenes that best advance the story and then make those chosen few truly great. The Plot Planner approaches plot from the overall story level and The Scene Tracker breaks down plot at the scene level. Both of these tools support writing plot as a layering...

When I founded the Mona Schreiber Prize for Humorous Fiction and Nonfiction in 2000, I did it to honor my mother, who wrote articles for magazines and newspapers, and taught writing in San Mateo County in Northern California. When I formulated the rules for entering the contest, I thought I would never have a problem with any entries. Writers would simply read the rules, in Writers Market, on the website or elsewhere, and that would be that. What planet was I living on? Based on my administrating the MSP, and judging other prose, screenwriting and playwriting contests, here is a...

Have you ever noticed whom the actors thank when they win an Oscar? They profusely thank the director for "getting the performance out of them." They thank their agent, their husbands, wives, extended family and distant ancestors, the crew, the studio, the associate producer, and of course, their 8th grade drama teacher. In short, everyone but the writer. On those rare occasions when they do thank the writer, it's always for the words the writer gave them to speak. What they should be thanking the writer for, on a never-ending loop, is the wonderful role they got to play in...

I recently sat on a panel with four other veteran TV writer/producers at the 2007 UCLA Writer's Faire. Our panel's topic was, Writing Funny TV: The New World of Sitcoms and Spec Pilots. What is this new world of sitcoms and spec pilots? I'm not sure how well we defined our topic or even stuck to it. As comedy writers, we were too busy making jokes. But the theme that seemed to emerge from our free-wheeling discussion was that there are new and creative ways for aspiring writers to get noticed and gain a toe-hold in Hollywood that go beyond...

I was listening to a speaker talk to a group of us the other night and 45 minutes into it, I was looking for the door. The subject was the speaker's life and I have to tell ya, it wasn't grabbin' me. Incident after incident was unveiled, stories about the speaker as a teen, adult, and married man seemed to be of the had-to-be-there variety. And then, magically, he came to a story that tied it all together. It was a simple moment in which he realized what his life had meant. And I got it! Suddenly all the stories...