CONVERSATIONS WITH STUDENTS: [names have been changed to protect the innocent, that would be my students, or not, to not protect the non-innocent, that would be me.] MAX: Each story is like getting thrown into a room with a blindfold on and trying to find a door out. STUDENT A: Yes. MAX: You might make it through one on innate intuition and luck. MAX: But the next one? And Read More ...
I know. I have been tragically neglecting you. Bad me. But I have a class of baby writers over on Gotham/Zoetrope that is parenthetical happy so I’m sharing with you what I shared with them. Newer screenwriters often get parenthetical happy. It’s one of the things I have to combat and sort of beat out of them. “Don’t get parenthetical happy.” There’s this urge, apparently, to direct the emotion Read More ...
What do Philip Roth, Steven King, Haruki Murakami and Jonathan Franzen share in common? They’ve all been nominated for Literary Review’s Bad Sex In Fiction Award. When you write a sex scene, you want readers’ pulses to jump – and not because they are laughing so hard they are about to pee themselves. Or as “dude” commenting on Nerve.com put it, “I actually bookmarked the page so I could Read More ...
Syd Field came up with the 30/60/30 model years ago and being the only guy to come up with a description of structure, his structure concept stuck. It was in all the books. It was in all the lectures. It’s used pretty regularly in film circles to this day to estimate where in the course of a script a story event is happening. For example, if a studio Read More ...
Congratulations to 3pages winners Brent Hartinger for Dead Enders and Rick Gershman for Rick Goes to the Doctor. The competition was fierce, the decisions were difficult, the bloodshed will be remembered for decades — okay maybe not by you, but we have the scars to prove it, and all of our decisions are final. Thank you to everyone who entered the competition and made those decisions Read More ...
Consider the following cast of characters: Mary, Mary Lou, Marissa, Marcy, and Marisol. How about this cast: An, Anwu, Anwei, Anawei, and Anweiller. Let’s try another one: Bob, Bub, Bubba, Bubba Jr., and Bubbaloo. Let’s try a scene: INT. BUBALOO’S BUNKHOUSE – NIGHT Marisol stares out the window while Marcy sips a martini, Mary files her nails, and Mary Lou flirts up Bubbaloo. Bob is in the corner Read More ...
3Pages just closed for submissions. All in all it has been a fun competition, though it didn’t really start feeling like a competition or very exciting till the final days, when suddenly it was crunch time and the deadline was looming and it started to feel real and more exciting. That is on my end. I do not know about your end. There were some glitches. My Read More ...
If there is — One writer who regularly nailed high concept [and did it over and over again] it was Michael Crichton. He was one of the first writers to write a story about a scientific and military response to a plague hitting the U.S. [Andromeda Strain]. Not to mention the only guy talking about space probes bringing back plagues. One of the first writers to address how Read More ...
3PAGES is a comedy scene writing competition for screenwriters. Anyone may enter. The prize is an AFW class. Interested? Read on — WHAT TO ENTER: A one to three page scene or scene sequence. It must be comedy. It must be original. And it must be written by you. Content is up to you but the judges do not really go for slapstick Read More ...
So I am talking to my students about pitching. And I’m talking about pulling information for a short one liner describing story. And someone gets stuck. In every pitch, the short pitch, the medium pitch, the long pitch, the phone pitch, the lunch pitch, the elevator pitch, the wow nice to see you in line at the store pitch – in every pitch – you have to be able to Read More ...
Two January classes, The Art of the Pitch and Visual Writing, start January 10th. There are a couple seats left if you act fast: VISUAL WRITING Begins January 10, 2012 Visual Writing | Putting Vision Back Into Viewing | Online 6 Week Master Course | Start Date : 01.10.12 | MAKE YOUR READERS “SEE” YOUR MOVIE: You will learn how to use the visual elements space, light, and texture Read More ...
News from Max: January Classes & The Haps. News from Max Welcome back. The newsletter is monthly(ish). It is in your mailbox because you are a member of AFW — or because you foolishly entered your email on an internet form at some point in recent history quite probably under the influence of tequila. If you’re here by accident, you can hit the link in the newsletter footer and scoot Read More ...