#100DayCC24 – Reinventing writing formats
Welcome to the twenty-fourth of our Creative Challenges. WriteMovies’ 100-Day Creative Challenge 24 is about reinventing writing formats.
#100DayCC23 – TV show formats
Welcome to the twenty-third of our Creative Challenges. WriteMovies’ 100-Day Creative Challenge 23 is about TV show formats.
#100DayCC11 – The Needs of a Film or TV Producer
Welcome to the eleventh of our Creative Challenges. In our third week of Creative Challenges, we’re exploring what producers and commissioners actually need from writers: WriteMovies’ 100-Day Creative Challenge 11 is about the needs of a film or TV producer.
Winter 2020 Screenwriting Contest – One Week Extension!
Parting is such sweet sorrow… and we can’t bear to say goodbye to our Winter 2020 Screenwriting Contest just yet. So as a result, we’ve decided to give this contest a one week extension!
You’ve now got until Sunday March 8th to submit, giving yourself a chance to win great prizes from us here at WriteMovies – not to mention the prestige of becoming one of our winners!
We’ve talked enough about what the contest prizes are in our newsletters and articles – but if you need a reminder, there’s $2000 up for grabs for our Grand Prize winner, plus a year of free script development and guaranteed pitching to industry for our top three scripts!
Our Director, Ian Kennedy, will be sharing some of his Hollywood/LA diary with us over the next few weeks, with news of meetings at major studios and with elite producers, giving you insight into what goes on behind the scenes at WriteMovies. Make sure you don’t miss out, so you know how we present our winners to industry.
And in the meantime, put yourself in the best possible position by entering our contest! The window of opportunity is still open… for the moment. Click here to submit by Sunday March 8th for your chance to win the WriteMovies Winter 2020 Screenwriting Contest!
WriteMovies Romance and Comedy Award 2020 – One Week to Go!
It seems like just yesterday that we were announcing the third WriteMovies genre prize: the Romance and Comedy Award 2020. But the final deadline is already here – you’ve got until the end of this Sunday, February 9th, to submit your scripts!
If you’re feeling in a funny mood or a romantic one with Valentine’s Day coming up – or even a bit of both – then this is the contest for you. We’ll be accepting scripts in the romance, comedy, and rom-com genres – so if you think you’ve got what we’re looking for, make sure you submit by the deadline!
There are great prizes to be won, too. Our winner will receive two sets of Development Notes from our expert script analysts, further advice to fine-tune their work, and guaranteed pitching to industry. Plus, all submissions receive FREE, automatic entry to the Winter 2020 Screenwriting Contest!
The winner of our last genre prize, the Horror Award 2019, was MONGER by David Axe, and he also walked away with the Grand Prize in the Fall 2019 Screenwriting Contest: $2000! If you’d like to follow in his footsteps, then this is your chance.
WriteMovies has been helping writers succeed since 1999, and we’d love to help you, too. Don’t miss out on this great opportunity to get your script out there. Click here to submit to the Romance and Comedy Award 2020 by this Sunday, February 9th!
Los Angeles Industry Liaison role for WriteMovies and TSIM
To reflect changes to other roles in the business, we and our agency partner TalentScout International Management are looking to recruit a new Industry Liaison based in Los Angeles, initially in a part-time role with potential to grow into a full-time role in future.
The aim is to hire someone already based in Los Angeles with a demonstrable track record of engaging with industry and promoting high quality scripts, who will support the company’s ongoing talent pipeline and film production activities – opening new doors every day to help writers get their scripts optioned and produced, get their films made, and provide dynamic ongoing content for the company’s marketing platforms in the process.
The appointment is intended to be the first in a series of steps to expand the company’s Los Angeles presence as both a promoter of exciting new talent and a production company: the right candidate should be ambitious, can-do and proactive to make every aspect of this a reality, including through working in film production, budgeting and packaging as well as marketing, pitching and script development.
At the heart of our business is solving problems with scripts and proposals, to enable them to fulfil their potential without compromising the writer’s vision; championing them to industry; and doing what it takes to get them produced to the right standards. We’ve been doing it for over 20 years, working with Elite Mentors including Tom Craig (RAIN MAN, SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE etc) throughout that time and getting films made including THE LIST (with Wayne Brady and Sydney Tamiia Poitier, 2007).
Candidates should be able to prove their successful track record of working in person in LA to promote great writing and promote their activities on digital platforms. Industry references will be needed and interviews will be held in LA on March 2nd – 6th.
This is a freelance ongoing position, on potentially flexible terms but with monthly minimums required and guaranteed, plus additional responsibilities and additional profitshare available to incentivize growing our client base and productivity.
To apply, please send your resume and a cover letter to info@writemovies.com. Some aspects of the role may be negotiable subject to guaranteed minimums.
Writing Insights: The Art of Exposition Part 2 – Make Exposition Interesting
In Part 1 of this Writing Insights series, we discussed how exposition is often a necessary evil in scriptwriting for conveying information that your audience needs to know, and how sometimes it’s better to use the visual medium of film instead.
But what happens when visuals aren’t enough? What do you do when you have to use dialogue instead? The answer is to make exposition so interesting that the audience doesn’t notice that it’s there – they’re too engrossed to get bored by the dreaded “info-dump” or feel that the characters are speaking in a way that might otherwise seem unnatural.
There are quite a few different ways to make exposition interesting, though. Here are a few of our hints and tips on how to go about it…
- Ignite the audience’s curiosity about what you’re about to reveal. Pose it as a question – for example, THE MATRIX‘s famous: “What is The Matrix?” – and make the audience want to know the answer. Then, when the answer is given, they’ll already be interested!
- Another trick used by THE MATRIX is including exposition in situations that are exciting – containing striking visuals and action – so that the dialogue is enhanced by what’s going on around it. Morpheus could have explained the rules of The Matrix to Neo over a nice cup of coffee – but instead, he does it through a demonstration of kung-fu.
- Make your protagonist be an outsider. As mentioned in Part 1, we don’t tell people things that they already know – but if there’s someone who doesn’t know the world or situation, then you’ve got a good excuse. And that means that it no longer feels unnatural!
- Think about what else you might be able to convey through the exposition itself. Character is best revealed through action – the things we choose to do, the decisions we make – so consider what you might be revealing about the character who is talking. The titular character of the TV show SHERLOCK comes out with huge amounts of exposition, but it feels fine because it’s in character to show off and it tells us a lot about who he is.
So there are our hints and tips to make exposition interesting. Keep these in mind the next time you’re writing a script, and make sure that your dialogue shines!