Advice

A particularly arrogant film producer once said to me, "I could be a writer, too, if I only had the time." Which implied, I guess, that if he didn't have to attend meetings, deal with studios, manage production budgets--in other words, if he didn't have a real job--he too could just sit around, effortlessly knocking out compelling narratives and crafting pithy dialogue. Yet for most writers, time is exactly that thing they can't seem to get enough of. Certainly not without carving it out for themselves, strenuously hewing a private space for their writing from a dense forest of financial...

Our reader Sanborn from Costa Rica asks: Why is there so much fuss about writing query letters? I always thought it's my story or script that counts, not my cover letter. Please advise. Marc Hernandez, Managing Partner and Literary Manager with the Crescendo Entertainment Group in Los Angeles responds: With seven years in the agency and (Literary) management business, I have received and read literally thousands query letters from screenwriters with various levels of screenwriting experience. The letters have ranged from the completely non-descript to those that have compelled me to immediately pick up the phone to call the writer....

-- About The Screenwriter Who Decided To Write A Comedy? There was a moment in your life when you acknowledged to yourself that you were funny. Maybe you were trying to be funny. Maybe you weren't. Maybe it just slipped out. But somebody laughed. It might have happened when you were in second grade, a freshman in high school, senior year in college or when you were out of school and into a career. Somebody laughed. You liked saying funny things. Maybe you even loved it. Getting laughs did something to you. Maybe it built up your confidence. Made you...

The Great Gatsby is a true Great American novel. What is even more amazing is that F. Scott Fitzgerald did it in little more than a short story. How did he do it? Essentially, he wrote a Great American Story. Fitzgerald was able to create what may be the fundamental story structure of 20th Century America and weave together a number of characters that each express a different take on the problem that the structure exposes. Let's begin with the novel's endpoints, because they tell us the structure. And the structure tells us more about how the story works than...

A common misconception sees genre as a fixed list of dramatic requirements or a rigid structural template from which there can be no deviation. Writers laboring under these restrictions often find themselves boxed-in creatively. They become snared in the Genre Trap, cranking out stories that are indistinguishable from a whole crop of their contemporaries In fact, genre should be a fluid and organic entity that grows from each story individually. Such stories are surprising, notable, memorable, and involving. In this article, you'll learn a new flexible technique for creating stories that are unique within their genres. How We Fall Into...