Scott Myer talks index cards and how they can help you organize your story. This is what a wall in a TV writers room may look like at any given time, cluttered with index cards. How can you use index cards? * Brainstorm: Any time you have an idea for a scene, beat, character, line of dialogue, Read MoreRead More
Scott Myers tackles the question of story theft in Hollywood from non established writers. Any discussion on this subject has to begin with this point: Story ideas are the lifeblood of Hollywood. Every movie, every TV series has at its very foundation a story concept. It stands to reason that if everything flows from the story idea, Read MoreRead More
Scott Myers posits an interesting tip for screenwriters – know your audience! Hollywood obsesses over target demos. The “demos” part is short for demographic group. Therefore a target demo is a specific audience a movie studio or TV network is aiming for. Think about it: 18-30 year-old males are considerably different in terms of their life Read MoreRead More
Of course it does – writing is rewriting. Professional screenwriter Tom Benedek talks about a project he’s working on and his thoughts on rewriting: I just finished the first draft of a script that I have been talking about, thinking about, structuring, restructuring, doing research around for way too long. It is still a great Read MoreRead More
Scott Myers hosts a series of Rules for Showrunners as outlined by Jeffrey Lieber, showrunner for Lost. Here, Jeffrey explains how they came up with the idea. We three were staring at a cut of this show I created called Miami Medical (which, when it started, was neither set in Miami nor exactly medical, but… Read MoreRead More
Scott Myers identifies some best practices for when to enter and exit a scene in your screenplay. Here’s another screenwriting mantra: “Enter the scene as late into the action as possible, and leave the scene as soon as you can.” If you don’t believe me, how about the dean of contemporary screenwriters William Goldman: “You Read MoreRead More
Scott Myers illustrates the life of a script reader who’s job is to read and cover terrible scripts in search of a good one. Outside of yourself, the single most important person in the life of your spec script is more than likely the reader assigned to it. Almost no material gets submitted in Hollywood Read MoreRead More
