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 [...]

The other day I attended a script reading that got me thinking about what was missing from his writing beyond the basic structural flaws, story issues, and underdeveloped characters.  The writer lacked one major thing: a basic understanding of the human condition. Sadly, a handful of people, writer included, couldn’t see that all the female characters were either bitches [...]

When creating your characters, they should each have a specific role and serve a purpose in telling your story.  There’s more to adding characters than giving them lines.  (See the article on Creating New Characters for further explanation.)  Every lead and supporting character should fall into one or more of these archetypal categories:  Archetypes Hero: admirable, likeable, lead to story [...]

Yesterday, I went over location descriptions; today, I’ll go over character action.  Character action is a little bit subjective.  Some writers prefer to leave it up to the actors, others believe they should put in every movement and gesture.  I think it’s best to work somewhere in between. Less is more A simple rule of [...]

Movies give the impression that scripts are comprised mostly of dialogue, but film and TV are audio-visual media; what you put on the page should be what we will see on the screen.  Beginning writers often make one of two mistakes: too much or too little description. The problem of too much description We all think every minor detail [...]