CRASHLANDER | EXTRASOLAR | IONWOLF | CONTACT

Tag: advice

  • Christopher McQuarrie on writing

    The most important thing I learned was this: everything can always happen much sooner, much faster, and with much less said about it. So damn true. Source: Go Into The Story

  • Character Design tip

    When designing new characters, you want to get the most amount of personality across in your sketches. One way of doing that easily is drawing a day in the life of that character. Where do they wake up? Are they a morning person? Who’s the first person they speak to? Are they late for anything?…

  • Script Frenzy

    It’s that time of year again. The blossom hangs from the trees, sunlight dapples across the sidewalk (AKA pavement) and a man’s fancy turns to thoughts of rutting. It’s also Script Frenzy time, when thousands of amateurs bash out a half-baked script in a single month. Sounds bad, right? Not at all. Script Frenzy is…

  • Concept versus Execution

    Concept is your one stellar idea. You hang an entire story around it. It carries your title, characters and plot all the way to awesomeville and back again. Hollywood prizes high concepts above all else, they’re pretty much the currency they trade in and people’s careers have been made (and sustained) on them. So there’s…

  • Learning how to write a script just got easier

    There’s been some interesting developments in the land of screenwriting advice recently. Some sites are joining forces and others are branching out, which is great news if you’re like me and want to steal ideas from people that actually have them. Here’s a quick rundown: Scriptnotes John August has been running his invaluable (for stealing…

  • Time

    One of the biggest challenges writers face is finding the time to write, while still juggling their butt-numbing day job and butt-numbing personal life. At least, I think it is. I don’t know any other writers. I should say, one of the biggest challenges *I* face, is finding time to write, whilst still being able…

  • Writing Movies for Fun and Profit: How We Made a Billion Dollars at the Box Office and You Can, Too!

    I gave Writing Movies for Fun and Profit, blah blah a shot and grabbed the Kindle version. It’s written by Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon, the guys in shorts from Reno:911, who now write shitty tentpole comedies deep inside the heart of the modern studio system. And what a place it is. If you…

  • Stuck on page 63

    I took Old Betsy the laptop out for a stretch today – blew the cobwebs off the mummified remains of Windows XP and like a total word warrior, went to a coffee shop to write. I set myself up in a bright and breezy place on 5th Ave. It was a blazingly hot day, but…