Spec scripts are the walking dead of the industry; they are simply not selling.. More than a few executives and producers I have know are either not with the same company or going out on their own. Pitch sites like Inktip are extremely slow if not dead.

David Ayer looks more like the guy his characters would arrest than the guy who wrote about the characters. With a shaved head and goatee, he fits the gangster stereotype. Talking to him, though, reveals a man of ambition and intellect. After a successful script doctoring career and after writing the script that gave Denzel Washington his Oscar for Training Day, Ayer took on another sort of corrupt cop story, Dark Blue.

In 1997 when Chess Grandmaster Magnus Carlsen lost to an A.I. chess bot the world was shocked.  But quickly people lost interest in A.I. and stopped talking about it.  "The AI chess bots are now vastly better than any human player who has ever lived, but — and this is important — nobody cares about them," wrote The Hollywood Reporter.

I missed this back in February, author and script consultant Linda Seger passed away.  I knew Linda Seger, met her once at a screenwriting conference that I was also speaking at back when my book Screenwriting on the Internet: Researching, Writing and Selling Your Script on the Web in 2001. 

What is a successful second act?  One that keeps the reader engaged, moves the story forward, and successfully delivers it into the falling action; that being the third act climax and the denouement.  A bad screenplay has a second act that simply doesn't keep the narrative trajectory in place and thus the spine of the story sags; meaning rising tension and conflict is not taking place.

John Milius made a name for himself as a writer and director of violent action fare that stresses issues of honor, anarchism, nonconformity and the therapeutic aspects of warfare. Milius first made an impact as a screenwriter and uncredited script doctor on such memorable 70s genre films as Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" (1979), Don Siegel's "Dirty Harry" (1971), "Jeremiah Johnson" and John Huston's "The Life & Times of Judge Roy Bean" (both 1972), "Magnum Force" (1973) and Steven Spielberg's "Jaws" (1975).

Dr. Linda Seger is the original script consultant having literally inventing the job in 1981; before her it didn't exist.  Since then she has consulted on over 2000 scripts and presented screenwriting seminars in over thirty countries around the world. Seger has written nine books on screenwriting making her the most prolific screenwriting author we have.   Seger consulted for Peter Jackson’s break-through film, BRAIN DEAD and Roland Emmerich’s breakthrough film, UNIVERSAL SOLDIER. She also has given seminars for studios, networks including ABC, NBC, CBS, production companies, television series (MacGyver, The Mary Show), film commissions, universities and film schools. 

First let me stop writing the script I am currently working on so I can pound out this short editorial. Though I should say allow me to stop bleeding at the keyboard as I struggle with the current scene I am writing. I have to admit that I am my own worst enemy as a writer.  I procrastinate, often, and it can sometimes be so debilitating that I never finish some screenplays. Why?

The Oscar nominated movie NEBRASKA, with an award winning screenplay by Bob Nelson, is in my opinion one of the better scripts recently produced for screenwriters to learn a little something about the craft. Why? It’s the epitome of efficient and dramatic storytelling. The script is pithy, direct, yet it has depth and emotion (theme) that is so subtle in its presentation.