ISP is designed to offer maximum exposure for your screenplay. It’s not writer’s block, but second act issues that effect your ability to finish your screenplay!

The instructor will provide proven strategies for second act success. There are several things that can be picked up on early in the writing process that will spell disaster as you try to punch through the second act and still maintain narrative trajectory.

This is an 8-week program from start to finish and includes script evaluation (second act emphasis), rewriting, live instruction and training, and online readings. You will receive analysis, phone/chat (your choice) conference with instructor, and then have 4-6 weeks to perform rewrites all the while remaining in constant communication with instructor as you work on your script.

You Got Close To Page 60 But… In general, there are many reasons why you “Lost it in the Second Act.” This class focuses on the major issues that arise. Here are just a few that will be covered:

Failure to outline your Dramatic Arc (This I cover in detail and show you where your script is going wrong and pinpoint early warning signs.)

No exit strategy for your Second Act (I will provide you with specific and proven strategies for properly setting up and getting through your second act.)

Overt awareness of screenplay structure (Seems like a simple thing but there are ways to manage your narrative and also increase tension and conflict without sacrificing tempo and beat.)

You took your eye off the ball (Doing more re-writing than writing? I’ll help you avoid this with some helpful tips.)

Your desire to complete the story wanes (You lost the passion, why? We’ll look at the dynamics of effective story selection and development.)

More information…

Since the DARK KNIGHT finished all eyes have been on what is going to happen next with the franchise and whether of not director Christopher Nolan will be a part of it.

Can’t tell you that but can tell you this, BATMAN BEGINS and DARK KNIGHT scribe David Goyer is not yet signed on, depsite rumors.

“It’s all B.S.,” the writer told MTV. “ALL of it.”

“Chris and I haven’t even talked about it. He quite understandably is taking a long, long vacation and wants to purge himself,” Goyer said.

“We have mused here and there [but] I mean Chris is pretty much a one movie at a time kind of guy,” Goyer said. “I wish I could tell you more. There really isn’t anything to tell.”

The 4TH Annual $50,000 Kairos Prize for Spiritually Uplifting Screenplays Announced!

Sponsored by The John Templeton Foundation, MOVIEGUDEÆ announces the 4th Annual Kairos Prize for Spiritually Uplifting Screenplays. The primary purpose of the prize is to further the influence of moral and spiritual values within the film and television industries. Set up to help inspire first-time and beginning screenwriters to produce compelling, entertaining and spiritually uplifting scripts, the winning scripts are read by top execs in addition to the monetary awards.

PRIZES: Grand Prize: $25,000 • 1st Runner Up: $15,000 • 2nd Runner Up: $10,000

DEADLINES: Oct. 27th, 2008 (Standard); December 1st, 2008 (Late)

For complete information please visit www.kairosprize.com

Call Nancy Nigrosh a recovering agent. After 25 years, she has left her recent post at Innovative Artists as a talent agent after decades of repping writers and directors for film and television.

The Lone Screenwriter

It’s time to take one last look back at the two and a half decades I spent as an agent. Of all the questions I’d had over the years, there’s one that most burned and bothered me:

Why is it so ingrained in Hollywood that one person alone cannot write a producible screenplay?

The Writer’s Guild Of America’s 2007-8 strike was supposed to be about a bigger piece of the pie for the future distribution of a writer’s produced work… the pie in the digital sky.

But the real truth is that the actual day –to- day script development process based on writer elimination has created the real strife. Historically this practice has led to the cyclical bloodletting every time the guild’s contract with the buyer /employer gang known as the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers, expires. If something doesn’t fundamentally change, there will be more strikes in the future, as each contract expires, creating a negative cycle of meltdown Hollywood and its doting mama, California, can ill afford.

Novelists, playwrights and poets are not rewritten by other writers. Even journalists do the deed pretty much alone. But screenwriters not only routinely and eagerly replace each other, they are tactical in their competitive quest for credit, credit that is not only emotionally gratifying but financially existent. Without credit, future opportunity, immediate and contingent compensation, dissolve. All that hard work to get beyond base camp, undone. Back to square none. Meaning - what do you tell your family, friends, former classmates, neighbors, and people you’ve yet to meet - that you did work on something glamorous for possibly years even, but in the end, your name didn’t scroll by?

To read more…

DIE HARD screenwriter Steven E. de Souza helped to create what some call as the “modern action film” where the hero gets bloodied and beaten, but some how comes through at the very end and at the last second.

“The franchise can go on and on, because it no longer has to be a ‘Die Hard’ movie,” explained the screenwriter to MTV Movies Blog recently. “Only the first two movies were actually ‘Die Hard’ movies, which I would define as the solitary hero with little or no help, largely alone for long stretches of time, trapped in an enclosed area he cannot escape. The first two pictures held to that model.” Along with fan-favorites Bonnie Bedelia (as Holly) and Reginald VelJohnson (as Twinkie-loving cop Al Powell), de Souza was removed from the series for 1995’s “Die Hard With a Vengeance” and last year’s “Live Free or Die Hard.” “[Now] they go out and they travel,” he said of those films. “They go to Canada and come back, and they go to New Jersey, and they drive around in cars and go all over the Eastern Seaboard in the fourth picture. Those are excellent pictures. They’re well-made movies, but I think it’s interesting that neither one of those - three or four - was originally written as a ‘Die Hard’ movie.”

“They were each scripts that were done and ready to go, and someone at the last minute said, ‘Hey, we want to make a ‘Die Hard’ movie. Bruce is available, so let’s change this character’s name to John McClane,” de Souza pointed out. “So, a script called ‘Simon Says’ was turned into ‘Die Hard 3’ and the bad guy was turned into the brother of [Alan Rickman] from the first movie. Then the last picture was originally called ‘World War 3’ about an older cop who arrests a hacker. And again, they said: ‘Let’s make the older cop McClane.’” “The first two pictures were written to be ‘Die Hard’ movies - whatever that briefly was,” de Souza explained. “The third picture could just as easily have been ‘Lethal Weapon 8’.”

Source: http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2008/10/02/die-hard-screenwriter-looks-to-john-mcclanes-past-future-muses-on-live-free/

12 years of screenwriting has taught me some things that I want to share. I’ve made money as a screenwriter, columnist, and non-fiction writer. When I started all those years ago on the Internet as this “Schmuck with a keyboard” I never thought I would get as far as I did; though I still really never made it all the way….yet. So I feel like I am the perfect one to give you some advice. I am still one of you to an extent and still on the fringes trying to fight my way in.

1) PATIENCE – there is no way to overstate this important trait that you MUST develop if you ever wish to make money (as I have) as a screenwriter or any kind of writer, period. It took me 4 years to get an agent; another 2 years to lose the agent; 5 years to make money as a writer; 6 years to get my first option; 7 years to quit my day job; 10 years to get my first assignment; 10 years to make good money (once) as a writer; 12 years to realize that what I know is really not much.

2) CHARACTER – and I am not talking about the ones you create at midnight in the throws of a creative convergence. I’m talking about YOU! Your character as a person and your psyche. You have to learn to live with yourself no matter what ends up happening. On no less than 3 occasions I was convinced that I was going to have my movie made. Had funding & contract (if it weren’t for that cast approval thingy); had Deal Memos on 2 occasions and it all added up to only more frustrations. I gave up twice only to realize I love to write.

3) TALENT – Ok, I put this third as we all know there are a lot of marginally talented folks making lots of money in Hollywood. I think talent is right there with:

3a) CONTACTS – It’s a WHO you KNOW business. What was it I read recently? Oh yeah, only about 4 or 5 percent of Hollywood’s screenwriters get the top screenwriting gigs. They are the ones making all the money because they are the ones who have the contacts. Are you serious about making it as a writer? Well, you can start with the online stuff, independent route, and that can get your foot in the door. But ultimately, you have to go THERE…

4) BE A STUDENT – not in the take classes continually sense (though I do teach online at 4screenwriters.com and taking 1 or 2 can help :). But as you develop your craft you must always be reading, writing, and watching. Improve your craft (art) by always being on the KNOW. Watch movies, read screenplays and books, read those Hollywood insider mags and websites, and always be writing. (ABW).

5) COMMITMENT – This goes with Patience and Character, but we all know there have been lots of folks who succeeded without a lot of heart or commitment. But for us, you and me, we gotta have the heart to go on every stinking day.

6) THICK SKIN – I have had some of my writing literally thrown away in front of me. I have had my ability as a writer questioned (and maybe rightfully so). You have to be able to take constructive criticism, that’s a no-brainier. It’s that egomaniac, bug-eyed, red-faced producer who froths at the mouth when they don’t get what they want though they can’t communicate what it is they really do want. And when they start spitting trying to sputter out their contempt for you…. Ah, Joy.

7) USE THE INTERNET WISELY – there’s a lot out here that can help you, use it. It can be your foot in the door. But don’t let it become your crutch. Sometimes, a lot of times, just reach under that desk and pull the plug. Grab a notebook and a pencil and go outside and:

LIVE LIFE – you will become a better screenwriter if you get out of that apartment, duplex, condo, whatever, and go out and smell the flowers or the dogshit. You need to experience life in order to fill that well of knowledge, emotions, and experiences that you can tap into and use in your writing. It takes more than creativity or imagination to be a writer. It requires that you hurt a little, bleed some, and heal over time. It requires that you live a little…

9) YOUR CHARACTERS – Ok I have to mention the actual craft and art that is screenwriting. What I have learned? Well, it’s not so much about gimmicks or hooks, though they are important in certain respects, but at the end of the day can you write great characters? Can you write the kind of characters that rapture your audience (reader) and make them forget what is around them? Craft them well, make them real; not too real as they are after all supposed to be a little better (or worse) than the rest of us.

10) GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION TO GIVE UP – so long as it is only temporary.

Take a class from Chris: >>>> Click Here.

Cheers!

Chris