This is an awkward topic to approach in today’s climate, especially with it being a key issue within the current WGA strike, but I’ve wanted to say a couple of things for a while. It feels like anything that can be taken as supportive of artificial inteligence (AI) in any form, right now, is immoral and akin to choosing the dark side. Writers absolutely do need protection from the implications of AI, but that doesn’t make AI evil overall, or mean we have to pick a side that’s either for or...

For context, I’m defining “breaking in” as getting your first sale or assignment from an industry member or prodco, not getting your first option, and not selling or writing a short (although these are all respectable achievements). Please also remember that my experience is limited to indie film, and I cannot talk about what it’s like at a studio level other than from what I’ve seen people close to me go through.

Some of these points may be relieving, while some may be crushing. The vital...

I exited the Christmas period free of the blues many suffer as they face the cold, stark stint through winter toward the tiny glimmer of light that is Easter and the comparative warmth of spring. I had a movie coming out, and not just any movie, the best movie I felt I’d made so far, and one I’d been closely involved with as a producing partner from soup to nuts, Night Train. To say I was proud was an understatement, and to say I was excited about the release was an even bigger understatement....

Spring 2020 is for me, as it probably is for many others, a bit of a hazy memory as life (unknown to many of us at this point) was about to become woefully monotonous for a whole year at least. It’s now hard to separate one day in the office staring at documents and video feeds with another but thankfully I keep a lot of notes to help me recall the timeline as it happened.

One thing I do remember strongly was the sheer defeat I felt about us having to cancel our latest shoot. Defeat so...

I keep a lot of notes and thus have been able to trawl back through the years and revisit the achievements I’ve made and the frustrations I’ve struggled with during that time. What follows is a brutal and honest reflection of each year with nothing sanitised to turn it into a fairytale. What you learn here may surprise and even upset you, and you’ve been warned.

I don’t share all this to pat myself on the back, although I am very proud of my achievements. I share this because I feel the...

First of all, I want you to visualise The Gap not as the short leap from the platform of a London Underground station platform into a train carriage but instead something more akin to the gaping chasm the spans the width of the Grand Canyon at its widest point. On the one side, you have a title and logline and, on the other, you have a script. The leap we want industry members to make in the hope we get read is pretty epic and we need to stop underestimating the level of commitment needed...

If you've found 2021 to be bittersweet, you're certainly not alone. I spoke last year about missing out on being present on the set of the first production I've been a producing partner on due to the travel ban, a small action-comedy we turned around fast called Double Threat, and I didn't think for one second that I'd suffer the same fate again. Well, what a cruel tease that turned out to be. With Double Threat in post, Shane Stanley and I dived head first into our new action thriller Night...

Let’s start by getting a little ironic. A preoccupation with supposed screenwriting rules, especially those focused on script formatting, and how it looks amateurish to ignore them, is itself a glaring red flag that you are a new writer. Nobody really cares if you’re using bold slug-lines, using the term “we see”, or directing on the page, not enough to toss a compelling script in the trash anyway. These superficial rules, most of which are made up by...

We are, to an extent, familiar with the concept of unrewarded loyalty because we are modern-day consumers and I’m sure most of us have had that crappy experience where you realise new customers signing up to the services you’ve been consuming for a long time are getting a much better deal. In fact, as consumers, we are often rewarded for being disloyal. Kinda not cool. On the flip side, within some sectors, there are specific loyalty schemes that offer gifts and discounts in exchange for long-...

Chris and Mark of Penumbra Films, who discovered the original screenplay by Jerry Robbins via Script Revolution, have been kind enough to send these in as they approach day five of their shooting schedule.

These guys aren't waiting around and, in fact, they are gaining funding as they go, so certainly follow them and their project to stay aware of any investment opportunities.

The Legend of Lake Hollow is a horror-thriller about a group of friends at a remote lakeside cabin who find...

I find myself often conversing with people around my age and older about these bygone times and, more often than not, phrases like “what ever happened to films like that?” and “they don’t make ’em like they used to!” are exclaimed with a resentful frustration aimed directly toward modern cinema. It’s always great to meet people on our own wavelength and, on those nights in alone, I often find myself choosing to watch content from the 60’s up to the turn of the millennium. Even the smaller,...

Something happened in October of 2020 which I personally feel is momentous. Like a ship launching silently in the night, the ScriptHop platform slipped into the waters of the internet to very little ceremony other than a few casual glances over the shoulder from most screenwriters yet what it displaces is potentially massive. A few did get excited but it was for all the wrong reasons. They mistook ScriptHop’s USP as a script discovery platform, a new market database, a free opportunity to break...

2020 has been a frustrating year for me, to say the least, but I’m hardly alone in that regard and relatively well off. Just when things got going and I had a film greenlit and ready to shoot in early summer, lockdown hit and we had to cancel indefinitely since we had a story featuring an elderly character. With the short-term future looking bleak, Shane Stanley and I fought like crazy for months to make something happen and thankfully a chance meeting in late-Sept led to a rapid development...

My journey from first contact with Shane Stanley (a multiple Emmy award winning director and executive of producer of Gridiron Gang) in March of 2018 has been a bit of a blur. We’ve come a long way in what feels like a flash and our first collaboration together “Break Even”, a female-led low-budget action-thriller starring Tasya Teles , Steve Guttenberg, Ivan Sergei, Joanna Pacula, and James Callis is set for release on December 1st in North America. We have an official website, we have ...

I have a wound when it comes to people who position themselves as gurus. Well, two major wounds on top of a load of cuts and bruises to be more accurate. If you spend any time within screenwriting communities, you’ll know they tend to lurk in every dark corner, ready to creep up behind you during an unrelated conversation, lean right up to your ear, and whisper “you need professional advice”. They are all too often creepy and parasitic.

My first major wound is the effect one of the most...

I can’t tell you how often I get asked to review books on “how to sell a screenplay” by people who’ve never sold a screenplay. It has turned me into a cynical husk of a human-being who often responds to those emails with a bark of “thanks but no thanks” before adding another name to my avoid list. Sometimes however, there’s something that catches my eye, looks promising, and results in me throwing a bone back. When I was asked to check out Prewrite, a browser based screenwriting tool designed...

I’m presenting this as alternatives to Final Draft and dismissing the notion that it’s an essential purchase to aspiring screenwriters but I want to establish the context here. Final Draft is an industry standard, that’s undeniable. You will find it in the writers room. You will find most producers use it. You will find most industry members assume you use it. But the industry standard side of Final Draft only really applies to the file format, the revision work-flow, and the various bits of...

Before I get into this, I want to state that I’m not naming any names. I’ve come to learn over the years, while working my way up the system, that corruption runs thick throughout the amateur screenwriting community and it gets worse day-by-day. Sadly, it’s just not worth facing legal battles or the hordes of cultists that defend these companies and individuals. There is a lot of money at stake and people don’t want to lose it. So anyway…

The early steps on your...

…who, after ten years of doing as little as possible to further her career, feels life has it in for her and the system is broken. In that decade of “intensely pushing herself on a daily basis” and totally not spending most of her time rearranging the items on her desk until she has the “zen needed to create her art”, Karen has written a feature length biographical about herself and how unfair her childhood was along with a completely unrelated young-...

Script Revolution is, without a doubt, helping writers and industry members of all creeds connect from all over the world and empower one another.

Of course, providing this service isn’t easy and isn’t cheap. Script Revolution is effectively a one man band. It’s just me, CJ Walley, doing everything from the server technicalities, to the coding, to the graphics, to the marketing with the Shootin’ the Shorts team working within their own space. Script Revolution is a significant part of my...

Firstly, I want to address the elephant in the room; the real life significance of the producer moniker. If you’re a screenwriter, the opening paragraph above most likely impresses you and possibly even sounds like a dream coming true while, if you’re a producer, you’re probably wondering what the fuss is about. This is the reality of producer credits. They are both meaningless and meaningful depending on where you stand in relation to them. To most people in the industry, particularly those...

Wow! Much insight! Many truths! Thanks for that bombshell, CJ! Seriously though, a realistic strategy to try and break into screenwriting should factor in AT LEAST TEN YEARS of sustained effort — yes, a decade, a freaking decade. If that terrifies you then it should. While you will most certainly see at least some progress in that time, such as getting reads, having short scripts produced, and building your network, you should not be...

So, 2019 has been a pretty incredible year for me. I got to travel to Hollywood and make a movie. Like, an actual shooty-shooty, cars jumping in the air, cheesy one liners movie. A movie that was featured on the front page of The Business of Film while at AFM and will premier at Berlin International Film Festival (aka The Berlinale) in February. Meanwhile, I’ve attached myself to three upcoming feature projects and 2020 is shaping up to be another breathtaking rollercoaster. In the background,...

There’s a lot I want to say about writer mental health as, like many, I find myself chased by the black dog on a daily basis and, over the past decade, I’ve suffered three major mental breakdowns, been to a lot of counselling, swallowed far too many prescription pills, and… well… visited “that place”.

I’m not unusual. In fact, based on admittedly casual observations, I’d wager it’s very normal for writers to struggle with their mental health, given that many of us find our greatest pleasure...

I’ve always professed that I don’t believe there’s a magic formula to breaking into screenwriting. There’s just never been enough data for me to see any pattern that suggests one route over another and I’ve done a ton of reading and research on the subject. Serendipity plays a huge part since the main factors that cause industry members and writers connect are either subjective (they like your voice) or logistical (they find you convenient). In the more recent years, I’ve suggested staying...