Advice — expert series

A Dash of Style: The Period, Part 3

Posted by Noah Lukeman on

In last month's installment of my book A Dash of Style: The Art and Mastery of Punctuation, we discussed a few of the potential dangers of overusing the period. In this month's installment, we'll examine a few of the dangers of underuse, and also begin to look at the role of context in punctuation. If reading a series of too-short sentences is like travelling in choppy waters, then reading a series of too-long sentences is like riding a wave that rolls and rolls but never, satisfyingly, crashes. Most readers feel as if they're gasping for breath when reading long sentences;...

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A Little Confession is Good for the Soul: An Interview with Writer/Director Stefan Schaefer

Posted by John Gaspard on

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A Dash of Style: The Period, part 2

Posted by Noah Lukeman on

In last month's excerpt from my book, A Dash of Style: The Art and Mastery of Punctuation, we discussed different ways to use the period. This time, we'll examine a few of the dangers of overuse. There is a major distinction between using periods heavily for a stylistic purpose (as explored in last week's installment) and overusing them, which results in poor writing. Newspaper and magazine writers tend to slip into this style, since this is how they've been trained to write. In book form, though, overusing periods is displeasing, as it creates a feeling of choppiness. With each new...

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Creative License vs. Creative Arrangement

Posted by Sheila Curran Bernard on

A teacher of screenwriting emailed me recently because he'd been asked to write a documentary. He didn't know where to start, and was trying to locate some completed scripts to study. While these might prove useful, I knew they wouldn't adequately convey the work ahead, or reveal important differences in the scripting process. How does one write a documentary? To explain: Fiction screenwriters have long borrowed documentary techniques, and documentary filmmakers rely heavily on the tools of dramatic storytelling. As I wrote in an earlier article, Documentary Storytelling: The Drama of Real Life, both groups need to worry about protagonists...

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Why You Don't Need an Agent - Yet

Posted by Sheldon Bull on

Trying to wedge a toe-hold in Hollywood as a screenwriter or TV writer is exhausting, frustrating, maddening, heart breaking, humiliating, confusing, and not just a little bit scary. I know. During the blastocyst period of my career, I was trying to climb out of the liquid nitrogen and differentiate into a working writer just as you are now. I knew not one soul in show business. (Not that there are too many people with souls in show business anyway.) Mennonite farmers had more contacts in the entertainment industry than I had. I was utterly bumfuzzled, consumed with the ulcer-inducing fear...

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