What to do when you are, as all writers are at some time or another, blocked? The screenplay, the sequence, or even just a given important scene just won't come. Are there tricks to employ to get yourself started again? Here are a couple of thoughts that might help jump start your scene. Think about [...]
There's a particular kind of dialogue that almost always reads as false, that always sounds as if the writer ran out of steam. It's sometimes called Asked and Answered. Or Asked to Answer. Or Prompting Dialogue. I like to call it Eliciting Dialogue. It's a line of dialogue whose sole purpose is to elicit a [...]
Writers are sometimes lumped into one of two categories: the story-teller and the stylist. As if they were separate skills. In fact they are two sides of the same coin. There are no novels completely devoid of style, and none empty of story (even if only the one the reader creates). What is the relation [...]
It's one of those phrases you hear and think you know what it means. Something about simplicity. This definition crossed my screen via A.Word.A.Day and I thought it nice and succinct. Ockham's razor states that "entities should not be multiplied needlessly". It's also called the principle of parsimony. It's the idea that other things being [...]
Documents to Go — a very cool app that allows you to edit and create documents on your iPhone. It has a desktop module that makes syncing with a given folder(s) very simple. Allows you to use the iPhone as a backup device. Highly recommended. 4.99. Well worth it. All of the eReaders — Stanza, [...]
Do you have two computers? Do you want to back up your working documents from one to the other without thinking about it? You should check out Windows Live Sync. This is a very clever and simple application that allows you to specify a folder on one computer to sync over the internet to another [...]
Nobody likes to be pushed around. Well. Almost nobody. And as in life, so with literature. We are always more engaged in a story when we feel pulled along rather than pushed forward. Drawn into the flow of event and language rather than lectured and led. Isn't that the deeper meaning of the film writing [...]
Perhaps the cardinal sin a writer can commit is to mitigate his intention for fear of offending. I always say: if it's worth doing, it's worth doing extremely. The most benign form of this error is timidity. Often I have seen descriptions of characters that pull punches. Make a decision. If your character is greedy, [...]
The pace of your prose should mimic the tempo of the imagined visual image. I call this "mimetic description." So, for instance, if you are writing a love scene, your sentences might be longer than usual, might have strained adjectives. The prose might be a little purple. If you are writing a chase scene or [...]
A frequent bad habit found in screenplays I call "cushioned description." It comes in many forms. And for various reasons. But such sentences all have the same shape: padded with temporal or spatial modifiers. Here are some examples of what I mean: As Gladys enters the bar, she spies Frank. While Frank plays pool, the [...]
