Advice — expert series

Often you'll hear producers, agents and others whom writers must deal with asking them for more of 'a hook' to their pitches or screenplays. What exactly a hook is, is rarely spelled out; they just know they want one. It's sort of like the problem faced by the hapless writer in Albert Brooks' 'The Muse' - everyone tells him he's 'lost his edge,' but he can't for the life of him figure out what that means. But spelled out or not, the term 'The Hook' is becoming inescapable, like 'Character Arc' or 'Plot Point' or 'High Concept,' so we've decided...

Much is made about the value of toiling for years in the Hollywood trenches before 'making it.' Those at the top call it 'paying your dues.' Baloney. Directors become directors by directing, producers by producing. They don't work their way up the food chain. There is no glory or career edge gained by laboring in obscurity while honing your craft. Hone it right out there in the limelight, and let those at the top pay for every comma splice and run-on sentence along the way. After all, you're already a damned good writer. You know it and your family and...

You're a hot writer! Already you can see your name on the front page of Variety and the Hollywood Reporter. But to make the magic work, you need an agent.Or rather, you think you do.Like a savvy cat who'll only agree to come to you when cream is forthcoming, an agent worth his or her salt is the same way.I was an agent trainee at ICM in what had to be the kindest office on the seventh floor. My boss, a woman, took pains to write 'nice' thank-you notes to writers who didn't make the cut. She did find some...

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,...