Screenwriting

Thank you for the comments. The discussion is very inspirational and educational. All feedback is much appreciated. Thank You!

"A contact sport" — Pat Alexander. That's the most accurate and most upsetting thing anyone's said to me all week. The upload-and-wait dream is so appealing precisely because it asks nothing of me but patience, which is the one resource I keep running out of. But the digital-business-card reframe is the part that sticks: a profile isn't a lottery ticket, it's a tool you sharpen. Now I'm dying to know what these mind-blowing updates are — consider one very serious writer fully, undignifiedly hooked.

Adam Spencer I can't share anything officially yet. But we've been doing testing recently and from what I've seen, the Stage 32 platform is literally about to become legendary, thanks to a lot of hard work from our terrific tech team who've been rebuilding the platform into an absolute force of nature piece by piece over the last year. We're excited to share soon :)

Way to build the suspense, Pat! Goodness, now my brain is itching.

I've been on here for nearly 15 years and have never had an industry member look at my loglines. In fact, I took them all down recently because I found that people's ability to rate them was detrimental. I don't need some random who disagrees with my advice in the lounge going and downvoting my material.

Stage 32 has always been very clear that it's not a script hosting platform first.

The key benefits here, and industry-wide, are in the networking. You have to be proactive. There's no magic bullet where you can sit back and wait for people to come to you.

CJ the thesis and antithesis framing is the part most structure debates skip. Once the story is actually arguing something the act count stops mattering because the breaks just mark where the argument turns. Three acts five acts whatever. They land wherever the thesis takes a hit.

That is also why the five act writers you named never feel mechanical. The form is following the argument not the other way around. The ones who feel mechanical picked a number first and went looking for places to break.

CJ Walley I have never looked at a competition for clients FYI

Even though most engaging movies follow a three-act structure (probably around 90%) and I enjoy that style too, it’s definitely not a strict rule. There are many great films out there that defy this conventional order. I think Iranian filmmakers, especially in social realism, are incredibly skilled at crafting stories that don’t rely on the three-act model. Also, I agree that having scenes that don’t drive the story is a common issue, and this is precisely where a writer’s creativity becomes crucial.

I'd also add "professional formatting" - which should be another no-brainer but some cold submissions I've received have proven otherwise. And agreed on the typos being off-putting, especially if the script is riddled with them.

Spencer Robinson, that figures. I've been working professionally for about 8 years now and have never had an industry member mention a single competition. I was spotted through blogging.

Flashbacks and V.O. (voice over narration) provide new information to the story. (And don't confuse VO with O.S. / O.C.).

The reason for a flashback is subjective. It is not set in stone why or how they have to be used, it is up to the writer, but I think if used at all they should be used sparingly.

"I use flashbacks for several tasks: character introduction, pacing events, and justifying characters' motivations."

I’m not a fan of flashbacks, personally. They say, never use them on an opening scene, which I tend to agree with. However, voice overs I do like, case in point Sugar on Apple TV or even to camera in the excellent comedy series Fleabag.

I find flashbacks take me out of the story and/or cause me to lose my orientation where I am in the film.

I'm just glad we're past that era of every TV episode being a flashback. Lost and Orange is the New Black completely exhausted it.

People love puzzles. It's in our nature to try to predict the future, so we increase our chances of survival. Good stories engage that part of the brain. Good flashbacks add to that dynamic.

@Geoff, I could see that. I tend to stay in darker genre spaces too so I don't often have to swip-swap as widely as some might. My current group are horror, thriller, mystery, and a darker flavored character drama. So no big swings. But I've had this issue before and I'm sure I will again.

Now, that one about the psychotic break. How did it come out?

I make it a point to detox after writing something dark and depressing by writing something lighter and softer. This was especially crucial when I was still writing my novels, in particular Petal’s designated death stories (so Nectar and Seed). I’m also still detoxing a bit after BoFS, a little worried that SiR is also gonna be a bit dark lol (I won’t spoil but Finding Elpis as a series did experience a rather strong tonal shift thanks to BoFS’s ending).

I can only imagine how deep of a detox I’m gonna need when I’m ready to write Dies Irae, Kyrie Eleison or even Karma Dealers :x

Elle Bolan — You said the quiet part out loud — “peace doesn’t equal safety.” That might be the whole genre in five words.

Most people think eco horror is the thing that can eat you: the bear, the flood, the thing with teeth. But that’s the loud fear, and it’s the easy one — a thing with teeth has an edge you can stand on the far side of.

The real dread is quieter and has no exit: there’s no line at all. We’re not visitors to nature, or its audience, or its victims safe outside the glass — we’re inside it, made of it, food eventually. That’s why indifference can read as peace and as terror at once; it’s the same fact wearing two faces. The woods aren’t haunting us. The woods are us.

The horror isn’t the thing with teeth. It’s the thing with no edges.

An example of what you are talking about is that killed one third of the population of Europe during the middle ages???? Was it a giant monster or an earthquake or some other natural event. No it was something that was so tiny you could not see it with the naked human eye. The mystery of it just made it worse, something was killing people for no apparant reason. Think about the horror of everyone you know just dying for no reason. Well there was a reason, it was fleas that had jumped from rat to human and gave the human the bubonic Plauge. It was a thousand years later when people finally figured out the cause, imagine that, you cannot really get a great horror than that!

It's where I live in my head. I've found peace with it. A dark sense of humor certainly helps.

@Bamutiire Edmund Thanks for this - I shall check the link.

I am a screenwriter who specializes in adapting stories into screenplays. I transform existing narratives and concepts into structured, cinematic scripts ready for production. Available for feature films and short film adaptations.

Caveat emptor. Always ask for writing samples. Don't let price be your primary guiding principle.

I am a translator on Fiverr for 8 years now.

I can say that this system takes more then it gives. They take from sellers 20% and pays only after two weeks if all goes well.

On the other hand I myself have been burnt as a client by this platform because there are many charlatans in there. If you can reach out to a professional to have your work done properly do so. Fiverr, in my eyes, exploits its sellers then throws them to the dogs. From the top choice of theirs, and after they changed their algorithm, I now get almost no clients because they can't see me in search results.

Best of luck with your work

All the AI-driven scams I see point back to Fiverr accounts. They need to find a way to address it. Personally, I'd only be looking at people who've been operating on there for a few years.

The danger of becoming a typewriter instead of a writer is on the money. It's an analogy I often use myself. Becoming a vessel for someone else's creativity is such a spiritually dangerous route to take, yet many willingly take it.

Bringing a story to life takes real dedication, and I have so much respect for every writer putting their work out into the world. Wishing you continued success with your project! If you ever need a professional editor, book formatter, or publishing support, I'm always happy to help. Keep creating!

There are scammers here, so you did the right thing in walking away. I hope you reported to admin. Many scammers have stolen the identity of some legit filmmaker.

Smart move and I am happy you realized it before it was to late and cost you money. Thanks for the heads up.

Eric

Thank you, Eric. I really appreciate your insight, and thanks as well to everyone who took the time to comment.

One thing I learned from this experience is that simply searching the name isn't always enough. In my case, the name I was given appeared to belong to someone with real industry credits, which initially made the opportunity seem more credible.

Looking back, I think it's just as important to verify that you're actually communicating with the real person through independently verifiable contact information, rather than assuming the name alone proves anything.

Hopefully sharing my experience encourages other writers to be cautious and to verify everything before moving forward.

This is a long-running and well-documented scam. You made the right call, based on your vigilance, but this needs to be common knowledge.

: Guessing the arc was:,Mohawk to mullet to man bun. :p

Haven't had the mohawk but proudly sported the others haha Sean Clark

Sean Clark — I wish. When my mohawk stopped meeting in the middle, I stopped pretending — shaved the whole thing and kept it that way. I made baldness a choice! I gave up imagined hair for imagined agency.

Hi Adam, I really enjoyed this. "Smells Like Middle Aged Desperation" is both funny and painfully honest, and I think a lot more creatives will recognize themselves in it than they'd care to admit.

As a book developer and ghostwriter, I've found that the stories people remember most aren't the ones trying to sound impressive, they're the ones willing to tell uncomfortable truths with a voice that feels unmistakably human. Your post has that quality.

Though I'm curious: beneath all the wit and self-awareness, what's the one story you've been chasing that still makes you refresh your inbox at midnight, believing it's worth the wait?

Thank you, Beckham B David. Yup, you nailed it with "uncomfortable truths in a human voice." That's the whole game.

You also caught me: the midnight inbox in that post isn't hypothetical. The story underneath it is A Pale Holler — Appalachian folk horror, though the horror's almost incidental. At its heart it's a woman in her fifties, a girl who went missing decades ago, and the gap between what we keep and what we hold. I grew up in that country, and it's the one story that feels like it came up out of my own ground rather than my head.

So yeah, that's the one I keep refreshing for.

Omg, right! haha

Grammarly is a good editing software tool with which you can review typos and also grammar glitches.

Final Draft Screenwriting program reads out loud the script and that’s what I use, Also I print out hard copies as well of my script, I check as I’m re-writing the script for typos.

Grammarly

I feel this one. I'm relentless in the early stages — structure, story logic, methodology — but by the final pass I'm too excited to see straight. Once I know it's a good story, the excitement eats my peripheral vision and I sail past typos sitting in plain sight.

So I stop trusting my eyes and use my ears. On a Mac you can have it read your text aloud through the accessibility settings — no AI needed, just select and let the monotone voice go while you read along on the page. The gap between what you wrote and what you hear is where the typos turn up.

Small comfort: most kinds of perfection stay out of reach. But typos and formatting? That one we can all actually get to.