Advice

"It seems important to me that beginning writers ponder this--that since 1964, I have never had a book, story, or poem rejected that was not later published. If you know what you are doing, eventually you will run into an editor who knows what he/she is doing. It may take years, but never give up." --Joseph Hansen The best secret I can teach you about writing a great query letter is that less is more. Writers feel the need to cram their letters with information, to widen the margins, lengthen the page, even take several pages. They go on about...

What do such movies as The Hours, Shakespeare in Love, Empire of the Sun, Wag the Dog and The Untouchables have in common? Here's a hint: their authors are David Hare (The Hours), Tom Stoppard (Shakespeare in Love and Empire of the Sun) and David Mamet (Wag the Dog and The Untouchables). Still stumped? Each of these movies--and we're talking about some very good films--was written by a playwright. OK. So a few good playwrights needed to make some extra cash, and they turned to the much more lucrative film industry to finance house payments and upscale vacations. That may...

Myths are the stories we tell ourselves to explain the worlds around us and within us. Is your story mythic? Well, it should be. And it can be, if you tap into the timeless and powerful tools of storytelling that make some tales so universal yet so personal that they stand the test of time and become classics. It's said that every "real" myth is true on at least seven levels. So, no matter your genre or your style, more than likely some aspect of your story is directly related to a myth. The more you play that up -...

In my twenty years plus as a screenwriter, I've heard thousands of pitches at pitch festivals, my seminars and in my writing classes. I'd say that 90% of the screenplays, treatments and ideas I've had pitched to me had a weak premise and probably won't sell. And a weak premise, even well executed, is still weak at its core. On the other hand, a strong, unique premise that is poorly executed can always be improved upon. Studios and production companies have paid sizable sums of money to acquire a slam-dunk premise which they will then hire a seasoned writer to...

The toughest part of any writing project is crafting the middle. Why so daunting? The Middle of most projects makes up a whopping 1/2 of the entire page count or scene count. The moment the main character leaves the Beginning and enters the heart of the story world, a door slams shut. Nothing will ever be the same again. Any lingering thought the protagonist has of turning back vanishes. Not so with the writer. When faced with the long, empty expanse of the Middle, many writers catch the "going back to the beginning" bug. That is, they continually go back...