Screenwriter
It’s felt like a very long year! While it started off a little slow, it ran up into a big and tiring finish. There’s been lots of great stuff going on professionally, loads of development work and a couple of wins too, with some Story Development funding from Screen Australia (the application for which is […]
I’ve spent a lot of time recently recommending a couple of fantastic resources to anyone and everyone I know in the middle of slogging it out on a screen story. The below two story lectures are fantastic for lots of reasons, but key to their impact is that they’re incredibly useful, craft-focused overviews for anyone […]
A look back on my main writing achievements for 2018.
On the destructive myth of a writer’s ‘voice’, and what ‘finding your voice’ actually means.
The delightful Holly Lyons, screenwriting lecturer at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, and maven behind script assessment service Screenwriting Scriptease, invited me along last week to a speed pitching session for her screenwriting students. Along with some fellow industry peeps, we lined ourselves up for an onslaught of pitches from emerging writers and filmmakers […]
You can click here to jump straight to the checklist! As writers, we’re told to think outside the box. We strive to look beyond genre conventions, to make interesting connections so our concepts feel ‘fresh’ and ‘unique’. We scout for intriguing ways into our stories, and look to develop characters with traits and motivations that […]
So, I write for television and I get paid for it. It literally pays my bills and keeps me fed. I don’t earn an outrageous living, far from it, but I earn enough to maintain independence and sanity. I don’t have to dig wells, sell shoes or wait tables* to keep myself afloat. AND I […]
It all started (for me at least) when I saw this tweet from J.K. Rowling: The tweet was in response to sports blogger Bradley Geiser’s (aka NBA Kurt Vonnegut @therealbradg) request for people to write their autobiography using only predictive text, starting with the words ‘I was born’. This blew my mind! How amazing, and […]
If writing is re-writing, scriptwriting is script editing. And one of the most basic tools of script editing is the One Liner, which focuses you on POS (point of scene). As a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed trainee script editor, my boss assigned me some practise. After I’d mangled my way through a set of off-balance notes, […]
About a year ago, I came across a group called NYC Midnight that run a slate of online writing competitions. I’m usually pretty suspicious of these sorts of things, and to be honest I’m not someone who regularly enters competitions. But after poking about their website, I thought, why not? I’ll try it once, and […]
I came across this fantastic podcast the other day via Tin House and featuring writer Ann Hood who shares her ten rules on how to write a ‘kick-ass’ essay. It is excellent and I urge you to listen to it immediately! The podcast is a recording of Hood’s lecture given during Tin House’s 2014 Summer Writer’s Workshop. Hood is […]
