TweetHappy December everyone! In the spirit of this month of holidays, Scripped has a challenge for all you TV fans in TV land. Write a holiday themed 7 – 10 page “minisode” of a currently airing television series. Choose a series you are watching now: something you like so you know how to emulate the [...]

TweetExposition merely informs the audience by presenting facts and ideas in direct and concise language and, for the most part, is usually not adorned with colorful or figurative words and phrases.  Exposition merely explains to the audience what its subject is, how it works and how it relates to something else.  Exposition is solely aimed [...]

TweetConflict is the very engine that propels a script, or any other story, forward. Conflict provides the story’s energy and movement. Without conflict, the audience remains indifferent to the events depicted within the story. Without conflict, a screenplay cannot come to life. Therefore, the necessity of conflict cannot be overstated. In dealing with conflict, the [...]

TweetRelationships between the characters within the screenplay must be revealed if, and only if, they are important to the story; otherwise, the words given to other relationships are wasted words. The relationships between key characters may incorporate the past, present and future elements of these relationships. The importance of relationship associations builds upon the essence [...]

TweetPure and simple, the heart of narrative film is conflict. Within the opening moments of a screenplay, two or more powers come into resistance. The screenwriter needs to lock the conflict into position as quickly as possible. This is such an important element of the story that numerous motion pictures do so in the opening [...]

TweetA screenwriter’s primary use of exposition is to tell and show the audience the time and place of the story, the names and associations of the characters and the essence of the conflict.  The bottom line to understand is that exposition needs to come quickly without any exceptions.  The reader and viewer must know the [...]

TweetBefore the words “FADE IN” appears on the screenwriter’s first page, the writer must know the story’s conflict, which can be stated in a concise sentence. If the conflict takes more than one sentence to describe then the story is more than likely about too many different things which results in confusion. The screenwriter, or [...]

TweetOkay, okay. Put the pitch forks and torches down. Three weeks is a long time to neglect a blog, but I’m back on the saddle again, and to keep myself from falling off, I shall embark on a series about Internet entrepreneurship. I meant to record the early days of Scripped in some blog-like fashion, [...]

TweetSo here it is, Sunday night again. Wife’s asleep and I’m in the living room, wrapping up another day doing what I always wanted to do – run an Internet company. The part of this gig that I underestimated most is customer service. We were so excited when the first users started trickling into Scripped. [...]

TweetLearn by Planning I always have a plan. Not just a Plan A, but also a Plan B. In April, my writing partner and I applied to Sundance Screenwriters Lab with fantasies of sitting round the table, working our adaptation to the bone, while having witty repartee with the great Quentin Tarrantino. So, I dream [...]