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The Relentless Road to “Back to the Future”

There’s one trait every successful screenwriter must have, and it’s not just talent. It’s not even just hard work. It’s persistence. Grit. The ability to keep pushing forward when every door slams shut in your face. I was thinking last night about how to talk to emerging screenwriters about the necessity of more than just hard w...
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‘Yes, And’-ing Your Story Into Existence: The Sixth Sense Edition

Let’s do some more “Yes, and’ing” of movie stories, shall we? This time, I’ve looked at a screenplay that I originally covered on the job as a professional Reader, then watched it sell in a huge $3+ million deal for M. Night Shyamalan to write and direct the film that not only went on to become a huge hit, but at the time it bec...
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‘Yes, And’-ing Your Story Into Existence: The Hunger Games Edition

When watching a movie or TV show, I’m always thinking about how and why a story works, and how and why the writer made those particular story choices. I’m also intrigued by how the concept began. How small was the kernel of the idea when they began to formulate the story and how did they go about expanding on the original premis...
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The Art of Selling Without Selling Your Soul

Today is all about pitching. I worked with one of my coaching clients last week and he needed help with his pitch. It prompted me to really dive in and get into the nitty-gritty of how a pitch should be written and developed. You’ll notice that the process of developing a pitch is quite similar to the process of developing a sto...
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Celebrating One of the Best Minds in The Film Critic Community: Gene Siskel

Every now and then I will be treating this “Screenwriter’s Almanac” a bit more specifically. And today, I did a little research - a pretty wide net was cast with just a simple search of, “What cool thing happened today in history?” Yeah, pretty broad, so of course I focused it more around screenwriting and Hollywood, and I found...
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Five Practical Things Every Writer Needs

I’ve worked in the entertainment industry, and specifically on the screenwriting and development side, for over 20 years. I sometimes marvel at that number, because the time has truly flown by. To think about who I was and where I was when I first jumped into this business…it’s a nearly night and day comparison. I still see elem...
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The Explosion of the Creator Economy

What Is It? How Do We Utilize It? Is AI Here to Kill Us All? Is This What Will Change the World?It’s the buzzword that keeps popping up in your inbox, on social media, and in those inspirational LinkedIn posts your old college friend keeps sharing. Or maybe you haven’t heard this term at all. If you haven’t, then I highly sugges...
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Moving Your Mindset From Aspiring To Professional Screenwriter

  • Staff Writer
  • .January 20, 2025
And so it goes… What you think, you become. Dream and become it. These might seem like an endless stream of feel good memes on your social media feed, but they do serve a useful purpose, especially if you seek a career in a business as fickle, unpredictable, and unstable as screenwriting.The first thing aspiring screenwriters mu...
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Dear Hollywood, You Drove Me Crazy. Also, I Love You.

  • Coli B. Sylla
  • .January 17, 2025
As a screenwriter who toiled away for years honing and perfecting my craft, I often found myself wondering if the next script would be it, or if the next general meeting would put me in the presence of the gatekeeper assigned to me by the Gods of entertainment. Nothing I had hoped to happen for me in LA happened in LA. Instead, ...
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The New Year and Your New Writing Resolutions

Do we need writing resolutions? Do we need resolutions at all, really? The basic answer is “yes”, but at the same time I prefer to look at the start of a new year as a review as opposed to a completely new, fresh start.We’re not new at this. In other words, even if you’re reading this Substack for the first time, you’ve likely b...
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Which Screenplay Should You Write Next? (Part 2)

This entry is part 2 of 2 in the series What To Write.Based On Something Else3 Body Problem was based on an award-winning book series by Chinese sci-fi writer Cixin Liu. It took the science fiction market by storm and had a lot of people scrambling for the TV rights.Netflix won the most recent rights battle and released a succes...
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Which Screenplay Should You Write Next? (Part 1)

This entry is part 1 of 2 in the series What To Write.Perhaps the most important decision any writer makes is what to write. There’s a lot to consider including the market, trends, your strengths, etc. When I started my career I had in mind to create good sci-fi material. It was what I read and loved and I couldn’t think of anyt...
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Why Do We Procrastinate?

I had that moment of “gasp” last night because I’ll just be honest with you…I forgot to post my weekly Almanac! I then realized why I did such a thing…and it actually doesn’t have anything to do with the topic of today’s Substack. It actually had everything to do with basic mental and emotional health…but for good reason! I just...
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This Scene...from Christmas Vacation: A Script Versus Movie Comparison

Happy Holidays! Happy Christmas! Happy everything because I’m sharing a scene from one of my favorite Christmas movies, CHRISTMAS VACATION. I wouldn’t say this is my favorite scene from the film, but I chose it because I wanted to look at the difference between what ended up on screen and what is on the page itself.So yeah! I’m ...
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Ed Herro & Brian Donovan Make Mayhem, Murder & Maple Syrup In “The Sticky"

  • Staff Writer
  • .December 18, 2024
A story about a maple syrup heist may seem the stuff of wacky pulp fiction, but a notable heist did actually happen in Canada. It inspired a TV series from comedy writers Ed Herro and Brian Donovan (American Housewife) appropriately titled The Sticky. It stars Margot Martindale as Ruth Landry who gets herself into a sticky situa...
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A Quick Look At Developing the Most Important Element of Your 2nd Act

Today I want to focus on developing the strength of your unique moment. What does that mean, exactly, “unique moment”? And how is your unique moment connected to the 2nd Act as a whole? It's something I stress over and over; delivering your "recurring moment." Burn that term into your brain! "Recurring moment." I've used it befo...
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Writing Exposition To Make Your Script Pop (Part 2)

VoiceoverDespite being overused and used to shortcut actual writing voiceovers can be a powerful tool used properly. I ask my students to not use these, to work harder to get across their ideas, and invariably someone will bring up Casino or Goodfellows and my argument goes right out the window.I will say that these movies are b...
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Writing Exposition To Make Your Script Pop (Part 1)

Exposition is the beating heart of any story be it script, novel, song, article or poem. Building to a solid ending requires layering and delivering information in specific ways to make that ending work.But exposition isn’t just telling the audience something. It involves many aspects of a script – or any story for that matter. ...
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A Look Inside the Christmas Movie

Because the holidays are upon us, I thought it would be fun to look at one of my favorite genres - The Christmas movie.I will start off by saying this: I do not agree that Die Hard is a Christmas movie. If you would like to stop reading right now because this tears a hole in your dark Christmas heart and makes you want to pull y...
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"Red One" Writer Chris Morgan Rescues Kidnapped Santa in Yuletide Actioner

  • Staff Writer
  • .December 2, 2024
Thanksgiving is just around the corner. You know what that means? Christmas isn’t too far behind. So make sure you’re on Santa’s “nice list” to join the Christmas cheer.But Santa has been kidnapped and must return to the North Pole in order to deliver gifts to millions of children and save Christmas. This is the story of Christm...

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