When you’re making a short or feature, everything you and your crew and actors do will take longer than you think. Especially if your actors need to learn a new skill. Give them heaps of time to master this thing they’ll have to do on set.

My favorite recent example (meaning I watched it recently, not that it’s a recent film) is in BABY DRIVER. There’s a lovely robbery planning scene where Baby plays an invisible piano in time to Dave Brubeck’s delightful “Unsquare Dance” while everyone (except Jamie Foxx, who stares at Baby) listens to Kevin Spacey explain the plan. Ansel Elgort’s “piano” playing is soooo subtle and so well done, because he worked long and hard to get it right. And it’s perfect!

Have you seen the show THE BEAR? Imagine the actors playing chefs didn’t know how to properly and masterfully handle knives. How convincing would that be? Not very. Jeremy Allen White (Carmen) and Ayo Edebiri (Sydney) went through intensive culinary training programs and worked in real restaurant kitchens to learn how to look like they knew what they were doing.

The prep paid off.

Go through your script. Are there any skills involved? Playing an instrument, handling a knife, skiing, cleaning a horse’s hoof, loading a gun, changing a car’s oil, speaking a foreign language, et cetera. Ask your actor how long it will take to learn this particular skill. Give them more than that amount of time.

When you get on set, everything is controlled panic. When you’re shooting you do not want an actor to blow takes because they don’t have the new skill down like breathing.

This kind of expertise better be dealt with early in pre-production. Later, it must be beautifully executed on set, preferably with a minimal number of takes.

Even if you think it’s a simple task, give them plenty, and I mean plenty of time to learn what you’re requiring them to do. You’ll be very happy you did.

My advice is to draw inspiration from the person you know best… you!

Even if you’re not writing an autobiographical story, or even something remotely based on your life, figure out how to write about yourself.

Of course, that doesn’t mean turning your whole manuscript into a diary entry—it means tapping into your own emotional memory, your inner contradictions, your specific worldview, and channeling that raw material into your characters and narrative. Doing so can unlock a kind of creative energy and authenticity that’s hard to fake. It makes your characters more complex and your story more resonant.

If you’re not digging into your own demons, probing deeply into your soul, trying to figure out your parents or some essential question about humanity that’s eaten at you since high school, your story may be a bland imitation of other narratives. It may be competent. It may even be structurally sound. But it will lack soul. And that’s the difference between a story we understand and one we feel.

Adding details from your life and psyche will improve your story in ways you can’t imagine. And don’t forget to spread the pieces around! Take your history, chop it into small bits, and infuse them into multiple characters–not just the main character.

They say, “Write what you know,” and, in this particular instance, I wholeheartedly agree.

Here’s a writing exercise I recommend for making your scenes as visual as possible…

Pick a scene in your script and rewrite it as if…

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Long ago I read Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s amazing novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude. Then, I watched the sixteen-part limited series.

The book opens with what is regarded as the finest first sentence of any novel ever written. The series starts the same way. Facing a firing squad, the main character remembers a moment …

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WICKED (the first part) was one of my favorite movies of 2024. I’d not read the book or seen the musical, but I heard it was wonderful so I thought I’d give it a go. I’m glad I did! As the story rolls forward, it gets better and better–something I don’t often see.

Regardless of your personal feelings about WICKED, there’s a moment toward the end you should consider when thinking about your main character’s change / transformation.

All through the movie, people have been mean to Elphaba because she’s different from them. She’s green, which has caused all her life’s problems.

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Once your main story elements are solid, you can turn your attention to cleaning up the writing itself. Getting rid of mistakes instantly makes your script more professional.

What would you change about the excerpt below?

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Hard as it may be to believe, ideas for stories do not always show up fully-formed in perfect three-act structure. Sometimes you only get a tiny shred of a wisp of an actual idea.

My initial inkling for a story about the fall of Saigon came after I read an article in Rolling Stone by Hunter S. Thompson. During the fall…

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Do you know what a “clothing pass” is? If not, I’m happy to tell you.

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To help you spot problems in your own writing, practice finding them in someone else’s. Take a look at the excerpt below. Can you identify the things that need changing?

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My favorite is, “My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.”

I just love that! It makes such simple sense! Why would anyone with half a brain allow an easy point of entry all the way from the street to their Control Room of Doom?!

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“[Dealing with failure] is probably the biggest test in the creative process, demanding not only an admission that you made a mistake but that you know how to fix it.”
- Twyla Tharp, Choreographer

If you want to be a professional writer, at some point, you will encounter failure. You’ll spend months writing a script or a novel, and it won’t sell. To beli…

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There’s a lot of talk in writing, especially screenwriting, about your main character’s external goal and internal need. Those things are crucial elements of a successful story. But don’t forget about a third important factor… stakes.

What horrible thing will happen if your main character doesn’t get what they want? Noti…

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It’s a concern I’ve heard before. Some writers think sticking to established screenwriting conventions forces them to write a boring story.

I disagree.

Instead of thinking of structure as a train track, think of it as guardrails. Structure doesn…

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In a first draft, writers often overwrite dialogue. Making dialogue more efficient helps with pacing and can make the line sound more realistic. (Note: This is not to imply that the shortest version is the “right” version. When deciding how to write their dialogue, always take into account how your characters speak.)

Below, we’ll walk you through an example of how a few simple changes can improve the lines in your script and give you another useful tip for strengthening your dialogue…

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Beginning writers sometimes find it hard to believe that character names matter as much as they do. Any old name won’t do.

There’s the usual “no character names that rhyme” and “no names beginning with the same letter.” All that “don’t confuse ‘em” stuff. But today’s topic is simply the NAMES.

This past Halloween, I was in a tea shop and everyone behind the counter was in costume. One woman was wearing a tan jumpsuit. Name tag: Spengler. I’ve never met anyone named Spengler, but I instantly knew her favorite character was Dr. Egon Spengler in GHOSTBUSTERS. Try to think of unique names readers will remember forty years later!

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The more I write, the more I understand the terrible rigor it entails. For a beginner, the writer’s agony is more difficult.

I compare it to romance.

I hope, if you’ve been in love, that you’ve never been dumped. A broken heart is the worst, especially the f…

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To have a triumph at the end, they must suffer greatly from the beginning, through the middle, all the way to that triumph. If they have suffered greatly, the victory will be swee…

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What errors can you find in the opening scene below?

This might seem passable, but there are a lot of places the writer could improve the excerpt above…

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When you write, you imagine a scene, floating in glorious living color above your computer. You watch the scene in great detail. Over and over, you replay it and re

do it. When you’re satisfied, you write it down. Generally, the first …

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This is a noble endeavor, but it’s not the best way to create an outstanding story. Most of the time, message-first screenplays come across preachy or contrived. Instead of focusing on character and world and scenes, writers get hung up on what the story is “about.”

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Which sounds more interesti…

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