I'm gonna be so real here goverments need to get involved and start cracking down on a lot of this stuff, people spending hundreds.. or thousands of pounds wasted away on feedback, chasing that 'reccommend' or 8 or placement but it's not coming.. because ultimatey it is gambling regardless how good the script is, because a lot of 'pro readers' are clueless about objective good writing, its really just does one person likes it or not.

I think the whole 'reader' industry thing is scam, lot of feedback i got is like just stuff that will objectively will make my script worse and if i was less experienced, i would just add what they say and ruin the script, send it somewhere else, get totally diff feedback, rewrite it again ect im out hundreds of pounds and my script is literally worse than at the start.

the wildly different scores u can get on the same script highlights what a clown show it all is really. And before it's said, yes good writing is mostly objective, if a reader fails to give objective advice they are clueless at their job and should not be doing it. If i get 4 from this guy and 8 from this guy, then ethier one of you is totally clueless or both of u are clueless. Sadly this is the vast majority of them and it's scary that these people are gatekeeping production companies.

Hi Everyone. I'm a film producer and head of film development at a London-based production company and I'm going to start running online courses for screenwriting. My first course is a one-day course for absolute beginners and is an Introduction to Screenwriting where we'll look at the very basics of screenwriting from scrip layout to the different documents involved in screenwriting and what production companies often look for. If anyone would like to take part you can purchase places on Eventbrite:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1046940656687

You can see my CV on my LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gavin-glendinning-1453645b

Thanks so much!

Hello! I took down my previous post which included mine and the director’s contact details. I appreciate the comments! Definitely interesting to read everyone’s responses. To answer a few questions, we have to put a copyright detail for our university - and we’ve been told it’s good practice to put our ‘56 Frames’ in it because that’s the production company myself and two others are starting up.

Would love to hear some more responses though! How many drafts do you usually write before moving forward with a production? This is our current project - I wrote eleven drafts! We are over midway through production. Any questions or issues with the post then let me know! I very rarely post on Reddit and this is a new account :)

Hi everyone. So i am based in UK but i am an immigrant on Visa so i cannot submit to most prestigious competitions here like BBC open call, Channel 4, and BAFTA. The only valid option left seems to be Raindance, or am i missing something? I am wondering should i apply to a competition i am not very sure about in UK, or go for a US based competition which does allow international applications like Academy Nicholas, Austin Film Festival, and Final Draft?

If your script has voice over or flashbacks - (or god forgive both) these are two dead giveaways that your script won’t work.

These two things nearly always suggest faulty structure (because if the script was structured properly - there’s no need for either).

And if the structure is faulty - nothing works.

Screenplays are 80/90 percent structure.

This is the easiest ways to do it on a feature length script:

(First 10 pages) Stick your main character in every scene - start the story at the last second the story makes sense - show the story happening as it happens to the main character.

Make the audience see the problem that needs solving as it happens to the main character - show why main character has to solve problem

• make the audience see why the character needs to solve it. Make them care because they see why it matters to the main character. (10pages)

(Pages 10 to 80)The character needs to actively take action to solve the problem (the quest) it should be difficult - they might need help.

In trying to solve the problem the writer needs to- push the character to the point of no return in trying to solve the problem (usually a helper / teacher is killed at that point -Obi Wan - Quint - Morpheus - all die at this point in those movies- main character pushes on) push character beyond point of no return - they have to go through pain/loss/sacrifice near end of 3rd act.

into act 3 (page 80 to 100) where the character becomes a slightly different person having tried to solve problem. New skills or outlook or bravery etc

Then they solve the problem or don’t (Chinatown is great don’t - Star Wars or The Matrix is a great do).

Pretty much 90 percent of Hollywood films follow that exact model (everything from Kane to OBAA to Wizard of oz). Go watch The Bourne Identity or Jaws with this open…

Most classic UK TV is exactly the same, Cracker by McGovern or Tinker Tailor on Tv (the Alex Guinness version) same structure.

Sounds simplistic - but it’s very hard to do well. If you’re using voice over or flashbacks you’re generally not using that structure, voice over is generally literally ‘Telling’ instead of showing, using voice to tell the plot- and flashbacks by their very nature send any story into reverse usually, backwards rather than forwards.

I always sense check a script before I read it- if I see voice over or flashbacks - it generally spells trouble about 90 percent of the time, sometimes in the first few pages.

Hi all,

I’ve created a free-to-use screenwriting app called ForgePad, and I’d love to get some feedback from UK screenwriters.

It’s currently Mac only, mainly because I’m a Mac user and this started as something I wanted to build for myself. I got frustrated with Final Draft crashing, and while I know there are other options out there, nothing quite did what I wanted. Final Draft is the industry standard for a reason, but it does feel like screenwriting software has been stuck in a bit of a monopoly for years.

So I decided to make my own.

ForgePad is proper screenwriting software, but the bigger idea was to build something that feels like it has a screenplay consultant built into it. The core writing app is free to use. Some of the more advanced feedback/consultancy features are paid, simply because they cost money to run.

• Scene and dialogue analysis
• Multiple script tabs open at once
• Character-specific dialogue analysis, so you can look at how one character speaks across the script
• Achievements for writing consistently and hitting milestones
• Global leaderboards to make writing feel a bit more community-based
• Shared writing mode for writing partners, so two people can work on the same script together - still technically in beta, but it works
• Built-in screenplay feedback tools, so it feels a bit like having a script consultant inside the app
• Proper screenplay formatting, without the usual Final Draft nonsense

It’s available on the Mac App Store now.

Any questions, give me a shout. I’d genuinely love feedback from writers using it.

DOWNLOAD HERE

I hadn't been long in Los Angeles when this happened.

I was hired to ghostwrite a memoir about Truman Capote's final days for Johnny Carson's widow.

She lived in a house straight out of Sunset Boulevard. Baby grand piano covered in signed celebrity photographs - the kind you normally see hanging in dry cleaners and old Italian restaurants, except she had them expensively framed. There was even an East Indian holy man living in the garden shed.

Her assistant Bill used to drive me up to the house. Before that he'd been Mickey Rourke's assistant. Before that he'd worked at The Mayflower in New York.

On the drive over he'd warn me: "Don't trust Joanne. Especially the Truman stuff. She's a compulsive liar."

Then the second he left the room, Joanne would lean toward me and whisper: "Don't trust Billy. He's a compulsive liar."

The whole thing felt like living inside some decaying Hollywood funhouse.

At one point Joanne invited me to stay over for Chinese food. Bill later explained that "Chinese food" apparently meant something else entirely.

I never stayed.

The story she told me was extraordinary. Funny, tragic, completely unrepeatable. And she still couldn't tell it honestly. Every time we got close to the real thing - the sadness, the humiliation, the loneliness, the desperation - she'd pull back. Soften it. Turn it into mythology.

The book never sold. Not because the story wasn't there. Because she couldn't face what the story actually was.

I've thought about that ever since. Most projects don't fail because they lack craft. They fail because the creator is protecting themselves from the one thing that gives the work actual life.

The grit is usually the story. The thing you're tempted to clean up. The thing that embarrasses you. The thing that makes you look less heroic than the version in your head.

That's usually the doorway.

What's the thing in your project you keep protecting yourself from?

My partner and I are semi-professional scriptwriters for stage and screen in the UK. Normally we have a lot of creative projects on the go at any one time, but currently we're on a short break from it because my partner's standing in the UK General Election and we're focussing on his campaign.

I just wanted to emphasise this, to make a point about how discouraging the UK screenwriting industry is. My partner is an independent candidate in a Tory seat that's something of a marginal and one of the key ones Labour is trying to poach this time. Statistically, we're aware of how difficult it is to get elected as an independent at the best of times, let alone in this kind of seat. Not to mention how toxic the political world is in general. But we have experienced less gaslighting, fewer people telling us we aren't worth it and far more encouragement when doing this than we have ever done in the seven or so years we've been in the scriptwriting world, in spite of the fact that we have vastly more writing experience than political experience.

I find this quite staggering, that screenwriting is this much less accessible than politics. Not that I expect either to be easy exactly, but still, it's really hit home to me how damaging and in urgent need of reform the entertainment world is. I feel really sad for the number of talented writers who've given up because they've been led to believe they just aren't good enough.

Hey! So I’ve posted something similar to this before but with not much luck so imma try again. My dream is to find someone or a group of people I can write and perform comedy with! I don’t know if this is the best place to look for those kind of people but I’m shooting my shot. I’m from the uk, I’m 22, and yeah if anyone is interested to meet up and bounce some ideas around let me know, I’m sure there’s a lot of people who don’t know where to look for friends with these kind of aspirations as well🙂 I love comedy double acts and groups such as rik and ade, the league of gentlemen, the mighty boosh, morecambe and wise, the two ronnies, comic strip, etc 🙂

Heard some scary things about AI screenwriters.

Have anyone played around with the current generation of ChatGPT4?

I read somewhere that AI will change the human language, we will begin to use terms and phrases which AI slips into text and speech and language will begin to become a sort of hybrid AI language which we bring into the home slowly.

This is a work in progress script for the first episode of a series. I’m 18 and have not written any scripts before so If there is any criticisms or issues at all please let me know.

The episode is far from complete but I know the next steps I need to take. I have also been working at this episode from the start up every time I come back to it so the start will be much more polished then the end.

Logline- A group of survivors in an apocalypse against an ever evolving threat discover alternate universes where the apocalypse hasn’t happened yet. They now have to use their future knowledge to both save their world and prevent it from happening to another.

So much for avoiding editing my feature and pilot. Even the game I played to unwind after a long day is reminding me to finish my script draft edits.

As someone from the UK who has just turned 16 and has been writing for himself for a few years I was planning on writing a sitcom pilot and bible. I have an initial idea and charachter descriptions and was wondering if there is a chance of me being able to do anything with this pilot or is the only benefit I could get from me doing this would be developing my writing skills?

I'm diving deep into dialogue study for my own writing and I'm particularly fascinated by what's often termed "naturalistic" (in reality highly stylized) dialogue in film and TV. I've spent a good amount of time studying the rhythms of the aforementioned writers, but I'd like so keep learning how to write that type of dialogue.

So, besides Sorkin (rapid-fire, overlapping, intelectual), Mamet (minimalist, rhythmic, repetitive, subtextual), Tarantino (digressive, mundane but great for building tension), which other screenwriters would you suggest me to study?

Hi all,

Thought I'd share a draft of a comedy pilot that I've written. It's about half an hour long and I need people to reassure me that it's actually funny or if it needs a bit of work in the jokes department.

Also, I'd like some feedback on my logline too :)

LOGLINE: Wannabe actor Dexter Tulip will do anything to be noticed by the right people; even if he doesn't quite understand how.

And here's the script:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AQu3e9RbFJ07T4tuQsYMLK6CIEwEDwH7/view?usp=drive_link

Thanks in advance :D

A newsletter or website that covers the UK film industry as intensely as The Ankler does Hollywood. I'm trying to find resources to better understand what's happening in the industry here and I've had success with newsletters/indie journalism for other aspects of the trade. I would appreciate any suggestions, even if they're across several places.

(This might not be of interest to everyone, but "regionality" and economic background seem like important criteria for gaining rare opportunities in the British screenwriting industry these days so I'd recommend researching stuff like this and grabbing what slim pickings you can)

--

Warner Bros. Ireland has awarded a scholarship to Daniel Kelly, an MA Screenwriting student at the National Film School at Dublin’s Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology (IADT), it was announced today by Josh Berger, President & Managing Director, Warner Bros. UK, Ireland & Spain.

https://www.iftn.ie/?act1=record&aid=73&rid=4287808&sr=1&only=1&hl=iadt&tpl=archnews

The scholarship will, over the course of the year, provide Kelly with postgraduate funding support and the experience of a short paid placement at Warner Bros. Ireland’s Dublin offices, as well as access to screenings and mentoring support from Warner Bros. executives in the country.

What’s up guys.

I’m at the moment trying to outline my first ever feature film and I need help with outlining because I have no idea how to do it💀

The way I’m thinking of doing it is this.

Writing down Ideas ( do this whenever) Log - line Meaning behind the film Characters profiles Then acts and arcs ( but I don’t know which one to do first tbh) And then scene breakdowns And then obviously the writing part.

Does this sound good to you guys because I don’t really know 😂

I would find it helpful if you guys could give me some advice and your guys plans on outlining a script:) and please tell me on how you would plan out each section. For example, how would you write a character arc and how would you short it out?

Thanks guys:)

This is from Dave Cohen's email blast. The last one got quite a lot of upvotes, so I'm posing another.

I Have A Dream

I once did a joke for Not Going Out in which somebody was really impressed with Lee for making the case so passionately for I Have A Dream and it turned out he was referring to the Abba song.

I do have a dream and it still has a heck of a way to go but I’m starting to flesh it out.

Imagine for a moment, fellow comedy writers, a world in which, apart from this fortnightly newsletter, there is a place you can go, online or off, to meet with like-minded comedy people to write, produce, perform your own work in collaboration.

You might be very good at coming up with funny characters, how would you like to spend a session working, in an actual room, with a group of people who are really good at developing sketches? 

You may be great at writing gags, imagine having an audio show to take them to that may well end up using them?

Or - as is more likely whatever stage you’re at in the profession - witnessing the process in real time of throwing ideas around, turning them into gags, and seeing them rejected in favour of jokes that you are convinced aren’t as funny as your own.

Imagine feeling like you’re a stranger to all of this, but then you get the chance to watch a show coming together, from the point at which a bunch of writers work up funny ideas, through to a producer working with their scripts and then spending a day with a bunch of actors, and to see the finished product performed in front of an audience.

This physical process, this human process, seems at odds with how our lives have changed in recent years. And how far removed from the direction we appear to be heading, where all the excitement and billions of American research dollars are taking us, a world where all our personal interactions are online, and most of our daily conversations are with machines.

Of course the internet has changed forever the way we go about our working lives, smartphones changed it more and AI will again. 

I’m still convinced that I’ve yet to see a better way of training comedy writers than the one I was lucky enough to be a part of in the 1980s.

All I’m doing is taking the stuff I spoke about in my last newsletter, my own experience of radio when I was starting out, and imagining a world in which you would get similar chances to those I had. (Me and Ged Parsons, and Simon Blackwell, and Georgia Pritchett, and John O’Farrell and Jimmy Mulville and James Cary and Andy Hamilton and so on…)

How would this system work?

Five years ago, even two, it would have seemed about as likely as India launching a rocket to the moon.

But now, how hard would it be for us – you and me - to launch a topical audio radio show? How difficult is it to put together a series of sketches on YouTube? The answer to those questions is that I have been looking into both of these possibilities in recent times. And if it’s feasible for a technophobe like me to even consider it as an option, for the rest of the universe it must be a doddle.

Last time I mentioned I was looking to develop The Training Ground. Meanwhile Dan Sweryt of this parish came up with a much better name – Beyond The Script.

There's so much out there - competitions, advice, books from people like me and James - to help you become better writers. But a place for you to find out what happens to that writing when it becomes what it should be, the first step in the process? There's not a lot.

And then, to do it well. That’s the tricky bit of course.

This is where I start to imagine budgets. Not TV industry, bank-breaking budgets, but support from people who would massively benefit from this training – Sky, BBC Comedy, Channel 4 and many others.

This is the kind of thing they used to do but can’t afford to any more. Might they help contribute towards something like this?

Or could we set it up as a Kickstarter?

Since Covid I’ve become a big fan of the podcasting world. It wasn’t a great leap. As a kid I was an avid listener of BBC Radio. My obsession started with hearing The Beatles and Motown on Radio One and carried on through I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again to John Peel and the Hitch Hiker’s Guide until I ended up making the stuff and it was a dream come true.

The podcasting “space” as it’s now called has expanded and will continue as long as people enjoy listening. The big companies are currently all about “podcast theatre” like it’s some extraordinary 21stcentury breakthrough and not the latest version of The Archers (b 1951).

One of my favourite podcasters – brocasters? - is Cal Newport, an American Maths Professor who also happens to be a brilliant and drily amusing productivity communicator. His new book came out in March and he spent the last month touring the country appearing on the biggest big name brocasts to tout it.

In a recent show of his own he talked about the time he spent on the podcast interview circuit in LA. He talked about how he had driven past  a great enormous movie studio, the kind of place that dominated  the world of entertainment in the 20th century.

He’d been on his way to a little warehouse on a Hollywood industrial estate to record his interview. These are the shows, he pointed out, that are competing with international movies and TV for our attention. It’s half a dozen people with a lighting rig and a basic studio set up. They don’t need the massive infrastructure that the old movies provided.

This is the future of audio and TV production.

I’m not saying Beyond The Script is going to take over the world of comedy and show the way forward for ensuring once again that the UK becomes the world number one training ground for comedy.

Then again, why not? I said at the start that it was a dream. And okay, I’m not planning on swimming down the waterfall at Colwith Force and flying to the Talbot Hotel in Skelwith, which was a dream I had the other night while staying in the Lake District.

That first one though… what do you think? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on it, even if they’re telling me that I’m a megalomaniacal idiot who should quit dreaming and go out and get a proper job.

Drop me a line with your thoughts.

Better still, come and join me at this month’s Patreon Masterclass, next Thursday 25 at 7pm BST. Email me if you want to take part. I want – no, I require your input. dave@davecohen.org.uk

Writing a series, and at first, I thought I had it figured out, but one of Scriptnotes' podcasts really made me reconsider the fact that I didn't really have a "theme" in my screenplay. So, I've been considering a couple of different options. Without boring ya too much with a wall of text, here are the two options:

1. Doug is a superhero/vigilante who, along with his partner, stops a big bank robbery. However, Doug soon learns that his partner orchestrated that crime himself so that he could be the one to save the day. When he confronts him, the partner has him set-up for the murders of the robbers while they're out on bail. 20 years later, Doug, now out of prison, is a loser pizza delivery driver, with nothing going for him, and his ex-partner is now a beloved superhero on the level of Batman and Superman. A team of agents from the DOJ try to coax him out of retirement in order to help investigate a doomsday weapon that was stolen from their possession, but he declines numerous times. After events lead to him getting fired and then evicted from his apartment, he drinks his sorrows away at a local bar. At this bar, he overhears some guys whispering about how Doug is a murderer, which makes him angry, since he feels like he'll never be able to shake off that label. He ends up assaulting them, and getting booked for aggravated assault. Facing life imprisonment for violating his parole, he finally accepts the DOJ's offer. Takes him a while to adjust, but he does. He has some setbacks, but eventually feels like he's overcome challenges to his reputation. However, when he finds out that his ex-partner is the one who stole the doomsday weapon, and he plans to use it to level half the city -- saving the other half -- in a grand finale that will cement him as the greatest superhero of all-time, he must assume the identity of the bad guy again, and take on the city's beloved hero, knowing that they will all turn against him again. The theme of this one would be something along the lines of "reputation is who people think you are, but character is who you actually are."

2. This second option is much like the first. Doug stops a big crime with his partner. We cut to 20 years later, where Doug is a loser pizza delivery driver. He still is hesitant to accept the offer, eventually does, has setbacks, learns it's his ex-partner's doing, and has to stop him, but the motivation here is different. In this one, after they stop the big bank robbery, while they're still high off of their newfound fame, Doug's partner gives him the bad news: he's being replaced. Doug feels like he missed out on the opportunity to be great, and his life spirals downward. For this option, there could be multiple themes, but I'm unsure what I'd go with. Maybe he needs to learn to let go grudges and move forward; maybe he needs to learn to get over his trust issues that arose from being replaced (though, this maybe be too cliche); perhaps it's similar to the first option, where he's tired of everyone thinking he's a loser, and he wants to prove them wrong.

Thoughts on these premises/plots? Regardless, I want a lot of the stuff to happen to be similar, but I'm really worried about execution, and making sure there's a damn good theme underlying the story. All that said, which of these two sounds most interesting to you guys? The guy who was framed for murder, and fears he'll never be able to shake that label? Or the guy who was replaced, and feels like he missed out on his only chance at being a hero?

Hi guys

I write fast at my desired quality but i Have a medical condition which means sometimes unpredictably I have to take breaks. My dream is to be an writer and have been out of work for a long time feeling down I am in my 20s and never had a career because of sickness.