Advice

Every script can (and should) be a learning experience for the writer. The more we write, the more we experiment and stretch, and the quicker we learn what works and what doesn't. We take these learnings to our next script, where we build on them and learn more. And then we do it again. And again. Writer/Director Stefan Schaefer learned a lot while working on the script for his movie, Confess. He benefited from public readings, workshops, and mentors. But he didn't stop there. He continued to refine his script all the way through production and post-production, and in the...

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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...

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...

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...