Embracing Cliché (by not being cliché)

"There is nothing new in art except talent." – Anton Chekhov


When teaching story structure, one of the biggest objections I have run into over the years is that “life’s not like that.” You can read my answer to that on my old Sherman Alexie post.

Another objection is that utilizing structure creates stilted work. Yes, it can, if one has only a superficial understanding of structure and

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My Book FREEMAN Is Out!

  Hey guys, my new book FREEMAN is actually out now.  We had a pre-release last month at TR!CSTER, but now it is available to anyone on Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com. 

FREEMAN, an original screenplay, is a western about Thomas Freeman a former slave, living out West with his wife and child, building a new life. Accused of stealing, he is forced to become a fugitive. To evade the posse on his

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Movies I Like (Redux): Planet of the Apes

"Overall theme leads to characters then on to plot" -- Rod Serling


This post is a kind of “re-run” of a previous post, but I thought that with the new Planet of the Apes film about to open, it was worth posting again. The original post was about the erroneous, in my opinion, comparison of M. Night Shyamalan to Rod Serling, I have altered this version just a bit to speak only of the

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