Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Screenwriter
I have a soft spot for Le Carré and I went to see Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy with certain trepidation. The reviews were good, but not universally so, and adaptations can be dire – especially…
Technique
How to land a top star and the BBC with one treatment
Most people hate writing treatments. Not me, I love them. This is how I used a treatment to hook a top star comedian and the BBC in just five pages – and how you can…
How long should your treatment be?
I’ve been running my Exciting Treatments workshop for over ten years now, and one of the first questions I’m asked is alway, How long is a treatment supposed to be?
One question that will help you sell your script
What is the key question you need to ask to sell your script? The right question follows soon. First here’s the wrong question.
Why do we call them Screen – Plays?
Want your script to stand out from the crowd? Want it to be read from cover to cover and passed from hand to hand? It’s time to discover your inner playfulness. Playfulness is not the…
A Clever, Sneaky Way To Hide Exposition
The ability to handle exposition really sorts the professionals from the wannabes, and I’m going to share one of my top exposition techniques with you here.
Pitching: What’s Love Got To Do With It?
Where do you fit the emotion into the cold hard-nosed job of pitching?
Get it rite, not written
Most people understand if a few typos or stylistic solecisms slip through in an email or (perish the thought) in a blog post. These are informal media. But a treatment or script is different. Unlike…
Plan now for Cannes
Cannes is the biggie: a week at Cannes is worth a year at film school. And there’s things you’ll learn there that you’ll never learn at school. But if you’re going this year, you need…
Multitasking
Newspapers tell us that women are better at it than men. Men tell us they are just as good really. Neurologists tell us that there’s no such thing – is multitasking the answer to our…
Want to enjoy writing treatments – find your voice
It’s true screenplays don’t offer a great variety of style or voice – but that doesn’t apply to treatments, synopses and outlines. There are far fewer style rules for such outlines of your story.
Canaletto, Gaugin, Cezanne, Dickens and Screenwriting
I managed to get to three of the biggest exhibitions in town this January – Canaletto, Gaugin, Cezanne – and took time off to read a great novel. It wasn’t easy. There’s always a reason…
Planning to write over the holidays? Here’s a Christmas tip.
Many writers put aside time to write over the holidays. It can be a great idea, and it can also be a quick way to get writers block! The problem is that squeezing all your…
Writer’s Voice
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Wave Your Wooden Leg
Here’s a screenwriting tip that will make your life so much easier. And before I get to it, just a word about difficulty. Many screenwriting books seem to want to make screenwriting hard – and…
The secret of telling a gripping true story
A true story can be a massive elephant trap. I know, I’ve fallen in more than once. Like pebbles straight out of the sea, true stories seem so gleaming and fresh and full of potential…
Tips from Linda Aronson
It was great seeing so many people last night at Euroscript for the conversation I had with Linda Aronson (writer and guru!) – she was in good form and full of useful advice on all…
A Sure-Fire Way Not To Sell Your First Script
I see loads of well-written scripts (and a fair load of badly written scripts too) and I’ve seen just about every fault that writers have ever invented. But there’s one flaw that stands out as…