The Dos and Don’ts You probably already know that you should be out there networking. And if you don’t, let this be your wake-up call, because this business is all about who you know. Now you may think “but I don’t know anybody. I didn’t go to the right university. My family isn’t in the…
Tips for Visual Writing Writing a novel? Great! We can have long internal monologues, a dozen subplots, philosophical musings, and a page-long description of a dining room table set just so. Writing a play? Wonderful! Soliloquies are a must. Actors love monologues. And dialogue can be endless. Twenty-page-long scenes recounting anecdotes that (hopefully) relate thematically to the plot…
Take These Steps Before Sending Out Your Script & Maximize Your Chances Yes, we all want to share our work with the world as soon as possible. But before we do so, let’s take a few final steps to make sure our screenplays are in fighting shape. Here are ten (relatively) quick and simple things you…
How to Write Dialogue that Sings We’ve all written dialogue that sounds a bit like this: “I really don’t want you to go out with your friends because I’m totally insecure and afraid you’re going to meet someone and cheat on me.” But, hopefully, we then did a dedicated dialogue pass and came up with…
A Whole New Era for CI as Get Repped Now Starts Feb. 16 As CI enters its 24th year, and after 11 years of Get Repped Now, a thought struck us. A really interesting thought. One we think you’re gonna like. What if instead of doing Get Repped Now for a brief window of time every…
Writing is only half the battle. The other half is selling someone on your writing. Here is what happens all too often: Your screenplay is polished to shining perfection. It has an engaging story, three-dimensional characters, scintillating dialogue, and it’s even marketable. All of the above finally gets you in the room. In fact, several…
The Networking Dance How do you get to know people? You’ve heard it before: this business is all about who you know. And assuming you weren’t born into show business, how do you get to know people? This is a question that comes up a lot. In particular, from screenwriters. Let’s face it, most of…
The Info You Didn’t Know You Needed Film festival consultant, filmmaker, author, and curator Jon Fitzgerald from Cause Pictures is probably best known as the co-founder of a little festival called Slamdance. In addition to writing books and producing movies, he is also partner with filmmaker and crowdfunding guru Justin Giddings (whom we have used…
You’re writing the wrong scripts (and it’s not your fault.) You know that trainwreck feeling when you’re trying to pitch your script and you sound like… everyone else? “It’s a thriller about a detective with a dark past.” “It’s a comedy about some really funny stuff.” “It’s a drama about family secrets.” And… they ghost…
Deep Dives Into All Your Screenwriting Questions Whenever we drop one of these posts, it feels like there’s so much more to say. However, the blog form naturally limits the amount of space we have–it’s not a book, after all. So we decided to join the 21st century and get serious about our YouTube channel….
