If you want to write for film or TV, then treatments, outlines, synopses (the terms are interchangeable in the industry) are something you have to get good at. And to write good treatments there are six things you’ll need to know.
Losing faith in your work happens to the best writers – and it can be lethal. The story starts to feel flat. The emotions false. The scenes mechanical. Soon you wonder what you even saw in the idea.
I’m thinking a good deal about creativity at the moment, as I prepare for the launch of my next novel. In particular I’m aware that these are difficult times to let yourself go and be…
IS YOUR SCRIPT STUCK ON THE BRIDGE? Back from holiday, I’ve been thinking about a massive underpublicised reason why far too many writers don’t sell. If you’re a writer, then you want to sell your…
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…
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.
I’m busy planning the Euroscript Professional Screenwriting Mini-Summer School (June 24-26), which is devoted to helping TV and cinema screenwriters develop their skills to a higher professional level – and I’ve been asking myself: what is it that makes the difference between a professional script and one that isn’t?
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…
Today we have an attribute that I didn’t recognise for a long time. When great artists of all kinds are discussed we usually get a load of blah about originality and spontaneity as if great…
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…
Michael Gladwell’s book Outliers has made famous the psychological research into what can make you or me an outstanding success and the figure everyone remembers is 10,000 hours. Einstein to Bill Gates, Steve Jobs to…
Here’s a tip that will work for just about every script, novel, short story, short film, movie or TV series.
Having a problem writing a drama script? Do you find it’s full of wonderful character development but somehow it just doesn’t come together? Or you like it but your story isn’t getting across to the people who read it?
I’ve got many ways that I use when I’m stuck, some wonderful tools for character development that I’ve picked up over the years. Here’s a very simple method which can have very profound and surprising results.
What is it that makes a great writer great? What can we learn from them and hope to emulate? OK, it’s that time of year and maybe the heat’s got to me, but I’m starting a list – my Top Ten Attributes displayed by the greatest writers – those I admire and honour. I don’t mean that they use or don’t use adverbs or three act structure. This is much more personal. And like every list it is totally fallible and biased and mainly intended to annoy, irritate and make people foam at the mouth.