Life: The Other Kind of Research

“I'm trying to take culture and put it onstage, demonstrate it is capable of sustaining you. There is no idea that can't be contained by life: Asian life, European life, certainly black life. My plays are about love, honor, duty, betrayal—things humans have written about since the beginning of time.”—August Wilson

August Wilson was fond of saying that he didn’t do research

Read More

Too much of a good thing: The pitfalls of research

"If your work shows, you're in trouble." --Chuck Jones

I was once writing a script on a particular topic, and as part of my research I was reading the "For Dummies"book on this subject. Someone saw me reading this book and scoffed. I took that to mean that I should have been reading a more "serious" book on the subject. Why? To avoid embarrassment? I wasn't trying to impress anyone--I was

Read More

This Is Not a Pipe: The Value of Research

Before I start I want to thank all of you who have promoted my new book on your blogs. And also thank you all very much who have bought the book. I am grateful that you think I may have something worthwhile to say to you. The response has been great. It just got a really great review on MicroFilmmaker.And now back to our regularly scheduled program…A playwright once told me that I should write

Read More

Of course you could just wait for the movie...

Thanks, everyone, for visiting this blog. I’m still getting used to the idea that people care what I have to say. Some people hate what I say while others find it useful, but it’s just a strange feeling to have people care one way or the other. Sometimes the only way that I can muster up the courage to write this blog is to pretend to myself that no one reads it. I didn’t even want to start this

Read More

How to be Original

"All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having

Read More

The Rabbit Doesn't Always Win

Last weekend I guest lectured for some friends who co-teach a screenwriting class and something came up that I see happen a lot. As I taught/spoke, I could see people were working very hard to “get it.” They felt like they had to understand what I was talking about right then and there.One of the things that teaching has done for me is make me a better student, because I see where others get

Read More

Here There Be Monsters

One of the most common things I hear from people who object to learning, or having others learn, story structure is that the writing becomes stiff and mechanical. They are right. I will not argue with them about that. This argument, however, is made primarily by those who have a hard time understanding and applying story structure and it is convenient to say that it makes their work mechanical.

Read More