by Tom | Sep 26, 2024 | Academy, Online sessions and screenwriting classes, Updates, WriteMovies Academy, WriteMovies News, Writing Insights
Join us for a new WriteMovies Screenwriters Forum session on October 21st, designed to help you learn What Script Readers Look For.
Learn what a script reader looks for in a contest entry and what mistakes to avoid! This Mini-Masterclass can help you gain the competitive edge you need to outshine your rivals!
Click to purchase tickets
During this session, you will learn:
- What a script reader looks for in an entry.
- What hooks a reader.
- What mistakes to avoid.
- And much more!
This will be followed by the opportunity to have your questions answered by a WriteMovies Script Analyst.
So if you’re looking to succeed, don’t miss out on this insightful session!
Click to purchase tickets
Earlybird deadline is approaching on September 29th for the WriteMovies 2024 Screenwriting Contest!
The Earlybird Deadline for our 2024 Screenwriting Contest is rapidly approaching on September 29th!
Enter now for the opportunity to have your script developed and pitched to the international entertainment industry!
There are also more ways to win with our Genre Awards and Script Pitch Contest!
Prizes for all contest and award winners:
All award winners will receive script mentoring worth $3200 and pitching to industry by TalentScout International Management!
All entries to the contests will also get a free one-page analysis of their crucial opening ten pages, meaning you’ll get professional feedback from our expert script analysts on their strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement. To make the most of the feedback, you can re-submit your next draft for FREE until the contest closes!
Entry before our Earlybird Deadline is just $45, so if you want to get your work out there, click here!
by Tom | Sep 3, 2024 | Academy, Ian Kennedy, News, Online sessions and screenwriting classes, Updates, WriteMovies Academy, WriteMovies News
Join us for a new WriteMovies Screenwriters Forum session on September 16th, designed to help you learn How to Succeed in Screenwriting Contests.
Click to Purchase Tickets
This event, expertly hosted by WriteMovies Director Ian Kennedy, promises to provide valuable insights and strategies to make your script stand out from the crowd.
WriteMovies Director since 2016, Ian has utilized his knowledge and what he’s learned from our founder Dr. Alex Ross to discern scripts and projects with the potential to gain a great result in the industry. Drawing on our years of pitching and dealmaking experience and our ongoing dialogue with the industry, Ian’s expertise can help you succeed.
Don’t miss this opportunity to refine your screenwriting skills and gain the competitive edge needed to outshine your rivals in our upcoming contests…
Click to Purchase Tickets
by Tom | May 17, 2024 | Updates, WriteMovies Academy, Writing Insights
Audiences won’t want to follow your core idea and plot unless there is depth in your writing.
“Writing needs to be as rich and deep as life feels to people.” We recently discussed this topic in our Script Development and Outlining Course. Here is an insights article from writer and WriteMovies Academy subscriber Claire Heathcote where she discusses her thoughts on depth in writing after watching the Netflix comedy-thriller “Dead to Me” – see if you agree!
For the opportunity to have your work published, subscribe to a WriteMovies Academy course today!
Writing needs to be as rich and deep as life feels to people. Discuss.
by Claire Heathcote, WriteMovies Academy Subscriber
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by John | Oct 20, 2023 | 2023 Screenwriting Contest, Development Notes, Elite Consulting, Industry Diary, Matt Rose, News, Pitching, Screenwriting Contests, WriteMovies News
Our Development Notes have been getting our winners ready for industry.
Major wins for all writers this month with the WGA and AMPTP reaching a tentative deal expected to end the strike, and meeting many of the WGA’s demands! For a breakdown of the deal, see the WGA’s Summary of the 2023 WGA MBA. And thanks to this, we’re resuming pitching and relishing it!
With the strike coming to a close, we are thrilled to soon resume pitching our winning scripts from the last contest cycle! Polished through a cycle of incisive WriteMovies development notes and exciting rewrites by our wonderful writers, we are ready to cast a wide net in pitching these stories to studios, producers, and financiers. We have been researching a wide variety, from big names to indie powerhouses, to contact with our pitches and strategically crafted one-sheets when the time is right. And that time is near!
Maintaining relationships with our winning writers, our team has offered their analysis and insight on numerous drafts, in order to make these scripts as compelling as they can be and ensure they pop off the page for potential producers. As we reach the climactic pitching preparations for our last contest cycle, we are also ramping up on a new screenwriting contest that is currently accepting submissions. Resuming pitching is an exciting time for all of us and we’d love you to be a part of it too…
Have you written your next (or first!) masterpiece but you’re not sure how to get it off the ground? Need the motivation to finally finish a story you’ve been yearning to tell? Get your script in before the submission window closes! A contest submission guarantees your script is getting out in the world and getting read by a panel of analysts and industry judges. Winners will receive development notes and the full pitching force of WriteMovies.com. For all entrants, we guarantee feedback on your first 10 pages, and you may opt-in for full-on development notes as well. We look forward to reading your stories! (And, hopefully, one day, watching them on the big screen!)
See our current contests here!
by John | Oct 16, 2023 | Ian Kennedy, News, Script Mentoring offers, WriteMovies News
It’s hard for anyone to process the scale and horror of events like the atrocities in Israel by Hamas, or genocide and ethnic cleansing, or the devastation caused by the invasion of Ukraine. But writers can play a vital role in helping us all process, and respond to, these unthinkable events when they happen.
Firstly, I’d like to state – on behalf of everyone at WriteMovies – our shock and revulsion at the attacks in Israel last week, and our heartfelt sympathy for everyone who has been affected by them or their consequences. My fear is that things are going to get a lot worse even than they are right now, for a much bigger number of people, over the weeks, months and years ahead, because of some of the factors I’ll talk about in this article. And I think writers do have the power to make some important differences in these situations, and I’d like to talk a little about that here.
Here are some principles for writers to consider about their role in the world and the influence that their work can have over world events. You’re welcome to respond to these and suggest others on our social media!
- Show us how we got here. Historical, biographical, or contemporary retellings of things that happened in the past are a vital insight into who and what we are today, and how we need to change for the future.
- Don’t let us forget the lessons of history. Find ways to reinvent and retell the stories that teach us the most from the past, for today’s and tomorrow’s audiences and obsessions.
- Don’t fall into lazy, familiar, safe views of the past that indulge and reassure us. Why create a faithful new adaptation of a familiar classic work, when you could be focusing on different angles within that world that speak to our modern views of that world? Or find other stories from that era which people then weren’t ready to tell about themselves?
- Don’t fall into the trap of treating anyone’s personal identities as more important than our shared humanity. That way lies tribalism, prejudice, war, and ultimately genocide.
- Avoid writing predictable ‘issue dramas’ that basically agree with everything we would already think about an issue, without teaching us why this thing happens or why we should look differently at it.
- Help us understand why people do ‘unthinkable’ things. Famous examples include: How can a responsible, ordinary person turn into a hardened, dangerous criminal (BREAKING BAD)? And, how can someone commit terrible criminal acts for their ‘job’ yet still try to be a good person for their family (THE SOPRANOS)? In the current crises, you could try to explain why Hamas doesn’t value life – their own, Israelis’, nor even their own people’s. Or how Russian rhetoric was describing Ukrainians as their ‘brothers’ in the run-up to the invasion – while their armed forces prepared to kill any of them who tried to stand up to oppression.
- See the bigger picture, and look further than people caught up in the crisis now will be able to. For example, here is an immediate reaction, one week after Hamas’ incursions into Israel in October 2023: the Hamas atrocities in Israel seem designed to show all Israelis and Jews that they will never be safe, and to provoke an extreme reaction in response. The reaction of Israeli forces to that has so far followed the pattern of previous attacks and hostage scenarios in that conflict very closely, but on a predictably bigger scale. Surely this is exactly what Hamas and their backers would have expected, and would have planned and prepared for? So if what Israel is currently doing, is also the goal of the attackers – who is actually winning? What will the longer-term consequences be as the rest of the world – Arab or not – reacts to what is happening in Gaza and beyond? Could this situation escalate far beyond its current focus – what if that’s exactly what Israel’s enemies are trying to bring about? And if so, how bad could things get for Israel and its allies, how quickly?
These are just a few of the ways that writers can add value to the world which can both recognize and help the situation, within and beyond any current crisis or recent shock. I hope they help you frame your own reaction to the many crises in the world, and to understand the part that you can play in helping us to address or prevent them in future. As ever, we would be very happy to mentor you further if this is something of interest to you – https://writemovies.com/script-mentoring/. But above all good luck, and if you or people you care about are caught up in these or any other crises, our sympathies are always with you.
by John | Oct 2, 2023 | Matt Rose, Writing Insights
A key part of our philosophy, as we review your submissions.
Reading lots of industry scripts gives you the tools you need to improve your own screenwriting – that’s the value of screenreading. It’s been a key feature of our philosophy over our decades supporting writers to fulfil their industry potential, and is no less important now as the industry emerges from the WGA strike and its impacts on writers and producers. Here’s an Insights article that encapsulates our philosophy that reading high volumes of scripts is crucial to making it possible to either write or edit them successfully. We’ve lived these values for decades: see if you agree!
Read to Write: Screenwriting by Example
by Matt Rose, WriteMovies Analyst
Theoretically, almost anyone could spend 5-10 minutes with an “elements of a screenplay” diagram like the one at https://slugline.co/basics, and churn out 90 pages of something with a beginning, middle, and end. “I’ve seen plenty of movies, how hard could it be?”
Sure, that’s as good a start as any if you’re just dipping a toe in the writerly waters of the film and TV industry, and any page-generation is of course a feat to be proud of. Though, doesn’t it sound strange to attempt to make a movie without ever having seen a movie? So, think about attempting to write a screenplay without reading screenplays.
No matter how big a film buff you may be or how read-up you are on “How To” screenwriting articles, if you want to be a screenwriter, you first need to become a screenreader.
Screenwriter reader? … You get it. The point is, with every screenplay you read, good or bad, you’ll develop your taste for what works and what doesn’t work. Of course you can dissect story structure from watching produced films or series, though you’ll miss out on vital on-the-page aspects that got the script made to begin with.
If you’re new to script-reading, start with the scripts of your favorite films or by your screenwriting idols.
Read a script all the way through, then try some of the below exercises:
• As you read, try to picture a scene holistically, even beyond what’s on the page. Try to “watch” the movie in your imagination. How might the actors deliver these lines or perform these actions, and what about the written script made you think that? What did the description make you “see”: a close-up, a wide angle, shot/reverse-shot? How efficient is the scene set?
• Watch and read a scene simultaneously (or, more accurately, with quick starts and stops). How did it translate? How did the tone of the writing affect its execution? Were you surprised at what was or wasn’t specified on the page (costume, setting, décor)?
• Watch a scene and then try to write it yourself in screenplay format. Then, compare your version with the actual script. While you may have objectively written the “same scene” in that they cover the same plot points, in what subjective, stylistic ways do they differ? Were your action verbs different, and how might word choice impact execution/performances? Did you capture the script’s “attitude” towards its characters? In your opinion, what makes either their or your version more compelling on paper?
By reading with an active mind for what works and what doesn’t, you’ll begin to develop your “taste,” which will ultimately amalgamate into your own personal style, and eventually—along with your unique perspective and lived experience—your “voice” as a writer. Once you feel you have some sense of what makes a great script great, further narrow down your tastes by reading scripts for movies that failed, either in your personal or the general critical opinion. In developing taste, exclusions can be as important as inclusions. Consider what didn’t work, and how it could be improved.
Branch out from extremes into gray areas. Reading scripts for movies that make you unpassionately say, “Eh, not the worst, but could’ve been better,” is a useful tool in developing your inner constructive-critic. Also try to get your hands on unproduced scripts or amateur screenwriting with intriguing premises. With a grasp on what makes screenwriting pop or flop, think of what changes might’ve made for a better read.
Even a long-active writer benefits from getting outside of themselves and assessing someone else’s work. Think about the trope of the narrative foil: sometimes we’re not able to notice our own feats or shortcomings until we see their exaggeration or their opposite in another. Maintaining an active readership, you may be surprised to find that something you loved or hated in one script—from plot twist to dialogue to tone—unlocks a new way of looking at your own rewrite that’s had you stumped.
For all screenwriters, it’s important to start or continue reading scripts. There are many resources for finding full screenplays to read online, including:
• Script Slug – a vast, searchable database of screenplays
• Simply Scripts – a plethora of scripts with a toolbar of useful categories like “Unproduced Scripts” and “Oscar Scripts”
• TV Writing – mostly for US and UK television pilots
• Indie Film Hustle – compiled list of Oscar-contender screenplays for the 2022-2023 season
Happy reading!
Enter our latest contests now – click here!
by John | Jun 17, 2022 | Writing Insights
It’s important that you make your script stand out and really grab our attention. But how do you do that?
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