Advice — advice

As a veteran writer and a licensed psychotherapist specializing in writers' issues, I know enough to know there aren't any rules when it comes to writing. Except for the following, which I modestly call the Three Cosmic Rules of Writing. I'm serious. Learn these simple rules, then burn them into your hearts and minds. It couldn't hurt. The First Cosmic Rule: 'You Are Enough' It's a growth industry: there are dozens of seminars, how-to books and audio tapes promising to teach you to write better, faster, more commercially. And there's nothing wrong with most of these. I know; I teach...

Humor is a perceptual experience that causes people to laugh. By definition, it is generated by a 'sudden radical deviation from expected patterns of behavior in a situation that concludes by being non-threatening to the perceiver.' That behavior can be linguistic behavior (grammar, word usage, pragmatics), character and social behavior (deviations from etiquette and social norms) or normal situational and visual associations (incongruities). Be aware in creating the characters in your story or screenplay that the source of much character humor is deviations from expected patterns of role behavior or social behavior. For example, the miser, the liar, the drunkard,...

Can writers take a long honest look at their own writing? The answer is yes, but it's difficult. When we go back to read the words we've put on the page, we not only read the actual words, we relive the emotions we felt as we were writing. We see the characters in our minds. We hear them speak. Unfortunately, our readers don't have access to our emotions, our vision and our inner ear -- they can only read the words on the page. Whether the book is done or you're stuck in the middle, it's perfectly natural to be...

As a script consultant, Dr. Linda Seger has worked with more than 2000 scripts, from 'The Neverending Story II' to 'Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.' Linda has also extensively studied the creative process, working with writers to jump-start their brains and emotions. Her most recent book 'Making a Good Writer Great' (available at The Writers Store along with Linda's previous books) focuses on creativity and how to awaken it. From her office in Venice, California, Linda offers the following words of advice to fellow writers: PUSH YOUR BOUNDARIES In so many scripts I read, nobody feels anything....

OK! You've got a terrific script! How do you get it read, and how do you sell it? The first step, of course, is to get good representation. One of the most important things to look for in your representative is whether or not s/he knows the marketplace. It is extremely important that your representative knows what the studios are looking for and the person at each studio who is looking for it. With the success of 'American Beauty,' many of the studios are looking for quirky, edgy, offbeat movies, which would have been very hard to sell a year...