A blog about screenwriting and things that are useful for screenwriters.
Inneresting
A look into the psyche of our readership, collecting the most popular links from the last three months of Inneresting!
Scriptnotes Recap
Yes yes, Ali Barthwell is insanely funny and has talent bursting out of her eyeballs, but the thing I want to celebrate her for the most is how she's built her career. Living in LA, you always hear stories about the creatives who live in other places. People
Inneresting
For our 300th issue, we're feeling the fear and writing about it anyway. We're looking at examples of the moment a character realizes that they're in trouble.
Highland
Bronson Watermarker Pro is not just a new version. It’s a brand-new app focused exclusively on protecting your documents.
Sometimes it falls on the writer to make two people sitting and talking a dynamic scene that pulls the audience in. We look at one such scene from Star Trek to find some potential writing strategies.
Inneresting
How big does a story need to be? Inneresting asks the big questions about story scale this week.
Inneresting
Why is this the newsletter topic for this week? Why do we think we're the ones to write about it for you? Find out in this week's Inneresting!
Scriptnotes Recap
I love Widow's Bay so thoroughly, so fiercely, that it strangely makes it difficult to write about. If you're reading this, you've either: Not seen the show, in which case my enthusiasm would be so intense it might put you off actually watching it,
Inneresting
This week's newsletter explores how active listening skills are part of what differentiates intersecting monologues from an Inneresting conversation.
Useful Things for Writers
In the heat of the moment, characters are allowed to not know what to say. This week's Inneresting covers how stress and emotion change how we speak.
True confessions: I saw Sorry, Baby three times. First time was because I got a screener for Scriptnotes and loved it, the second time was when it came out in theaters I had to show my wife the movie I wouldn't stop talking about, and then I took
A difficult choice isn't automatically a dilemma, so this week's Inneresting looks at how time pressure raises the stakes and forces character action.
Ideas for how to use in-universe broadcasts to have fun with exposition!
What happens when you show how much opposing characters have in common? How can "two sides of the same coin" add depth to a story?
If you clicked on this and you haven't seen any Joachim Trier movies, go watch a Joachim Trier movie. Any of them. You can't go wrong. And now you're back. What a movie, right? Joachim and his co-writer Eskil Vogt make movies for
What makes for an Inneresting story beat? Let's break things down as small as possible and see what we find.
It's all-in on experimental film for Inneresting this week. Let's try something new!
Early on in my Scriptnotes tenure, John slipped during an episode and accidentally called me Drew Goddard. I said, "I wish I was Drew Goddard," to which Craig paused the conversation and very kindly told me that I shouldn't try to be anyone other than myself,
This week's Inneresting looks at perspective and audience sympathy. Who are you telling your audience your story is about?
The climactic battle in Vought Tower from season 3 finale of The Boys, "The Instant White-Hot Wild" gives an example of grounding tight tactics in clear character choices. There are lots of ways to win a fight, but it feels more impactful when the audience believes that
This week's Inneresting focuses on character chemistry! No beakers, goggles, or eye rinse station necessary.
