Erik Bork – Throwing Rocks at your Characters Erik was another highly effective seminar leader.  Most of his material dealt with structure and came from Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat, which is a really helpful book on structure.  The one problem I had with Snyder’s book was that after reading it, I found it screwed [...]

Billy’s second session was more about the current trend in comedy toward the raunchy, Judd Apatow type of humour. Establishing The Comedic World The first thing you need to do in order for audiences to accept this kind of humour is to establish likable characters.  If we like the characters, we’re willing to go anywhere [...]

Writing the Romantic Comedy I apologise to those of you who are not romantic comedy or comedy writers as that is all I had time for at the Expo.  Having said that, however, there are a few tips that will apply to any genre. Billy Mernit was one of the best workshop speakers at the [...]

Continued from yesterday’s article on Danny Manus’ guide to the pitchfest. Pitching Do’s and Don’ts: What not to Pitch: The period piece. Anything before 1970 is considered a period piece.  It’ll be hard to sell, but if you have a solid story and rockin’ script, pitch it. The mega-budget sci-fi fantasy epic trilogy No production [...]

Ever wonder what it’s like to attend a screenwriters’ pitchfest?  Courtesy of Tim Coyne’s The Hollywood Podcast, here’s an excellent audio clip of real pitches that work and a lot that don’t.  See if you can tell the difference.  Thanks, Tim!