Screenwriting

Has anyone else entered yet? I've entered two of my pilots this year:

Bad Idea

Desperate to save his wrestling charity from the brink of collapse, a washed up temperamental bad guy wrestler fakes a real life heel turn to stay afloat, throwing the mayor of Honolulu into the fight for her political life in the process.

Success Story

Twenty years after being voted Most Likely to Succeed, an underachiever concocts a success story to tell at his high school reunion, but finds himself forced to maintain the illusion of success long after the reunion’s end.

Good luck to all who entered!

After a deep-space exploration mission goes catastrophically wrong, three astronauts are swallowed by a mysterious wormhole and hurled across fractured parallel realities. Stranded in a terrifying alternate Earth where the Nazis won World War II and now rule with absolute power, the crew must navigate a world of oppression, uncover the truth behind the collapsing multiverse, and find a way back home before they are erased from existence forever.

I’ve been sitting with this character for a while now.

Adrian Cane.

See, unlike most of my characters, he’s...twisted. Twisted in a way that might make you feel uncomfortable.

That I want to make you feel uncomfortable.

Most characters can be fixed. In fact, that’s their entire arc—the journey to their redemption.

I’m not sure I want Adrian to have that…at least not yet.

Learn with me.

See, Adrian doesn’t love the way normal people love. There’s no softness in it. No room to breathe.

When Adrian wants something—when he wants someone—it becomes the only thing that exists. Everything else is just noise.

Take a breath. He’s not Joe Goldberg. Nor is he Glenn Close.

He’s worse.

Because the terrifying thing about Adrian isn’t that he’s a monster. It’s that you understand him.

You follow his twisted logic. You see how he got there.

Somewhere in the middle of the darkness, you catch yourself thinking—‘I get it’.

That’s the part that keeps me up.

I’m developing this story for screen and I keep asking myself ‘how do you make an audience sit with this man for hours?”

‘How do I make them hate him and love him at the same time?’

‘How do I make them acknowledge the darkness that is in every one of us…even if they don’t want to?’

Does this make me just as twisted as Adrian Cane?

I hope so.

Writers, directors, have you ever created a character that unsettled you? How did you handle it?

My writing process is not pretty. I want to be honest about that.

There’s no clean outline waiting for me every morning.

No colour coded system. No perfectly structured beat sheet that I follow like a map.

No.

See, it’s more like I show up. I sit with the character.

I ask them questions and sometimes, they answer. Sometimes, they go completely silent and I’m left staring at a blank page, wondering if I’ve lost it completely.

Learn with me.

The silence is the hardest part.

Because when you’re a writer, the silence feels like failure. Like the story is gone. Leaves you feeling like you imagined the entire thing.

But I’ve learned—slowly, painfully—that the silence is usually just the story thinking. Rearranging itself.

Getting ready to show you something you weren’t ready to see before.

Scriptwriting has made this even more interesting for me. Because the process of writing for screen is so different from writing prose.

The instinct I build over a decade of writing novels, don’t always translate. Sometimes, they actively get in the way.

So, I’m rebuilding. Learning a new way to listen to a story.

It’s humbling. It’s frustrating. And on the good days, it’s the most exciting thing I’ve ever done.

What about you? What does your process actually look like? Not the polished version—the real one.

FOR SALE: ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY – THE INVISIBLE LIFE

I’m offering my original screenplay The Invisible Life — a grounded, emotionally driven coming-of-age story with strong character focus and real cinematic potential. This script follows Ethan, a quiet, observant teenager who’s spent years fading into the background of his own life. As family tension, identity, and connection collide, he’s pushed to confront what it means to actually be seen — and to take up space in a world that’s learned to overlook him.

What you’re getting:

• Full original screenplay (feature-length)

• Strong character arcs and authentic dialogue

• Themes: identity, isolation, family dynamics, self-expression

• Ideal for indie film, drama production, or development

Tone & style: Think introspective, atmospheric storytelling with a mix of realism and emotional depth — driven by performance and subtle tension rather than spectacle.

Perfect for:

• Producers looking for a character-driven drama

• Directors wanting a meaningful, actor-focused project

• Studios or creatives developing coming-of-age content

If you're interested or want more details (logline, full script, pricing), send me a message. Serious inquiries only.

Today I came across a reel about the real mission of a producer, not just finding financing but functioning like the CEO of a company. And it made me think about something we don’t talk about enough in screenwriting:

Before anyone else steps in, the writer is the first person to “produce” the story.

We’re the ones who:

✔ Build the world from scratch

✔ Manage the emotional budget of every scene

✔ Package the characters, arcs, and themes

✔ Create the blueprint that every department will eventually follow

✔ And make the first thousand decisions that shape the final film

We may not be handling contracts or schedules, but we are running the creative engine long before the project becomes a production.

And that comes with its own challenges.

For me, my current challenge is rebuilding my pitch deck for Soul Mated. The one I have was created back when the script was in its third draft. After coverage, labs, and a lot of deep work here on Stage 32, the core of the story evolved. I’m now on draft five, and the pitch deck no longer reflects the heart of the film. So my task is to reshape it so the story and the presentation finally match again.

I’d love to open this up to the room:

What’s the biggest challenge you’re facing in your screenwriting journey right now?

Is it structure, rewriting, confidence, clarity, discipline, feedback, or something else entirely?

And what kind of support would help you move through it?

There are so many streaming apps + network television to entertain ourselves with. Unfortunately, the great majority of the existing shows are mediocre at best. I find myself watching my favorites over & over again. It can definitely get frustrating as a writer knowing that the scripts that can barely hold your attention, are the same ones having millions invested in them. Allegedly streaming is supposed to open the doors for a lot of fresh voices & ideas. Do you think that will change in the near future?

Everyone talks about AI replacing writers. That is not the real problem.

The real threat is convergence.

AI systems are trained on massive datasets of existing work. They learn what is most common. Most popular. Most average. When you ask an AI to generate a story it pulls from the center of everything it has seen. It finds the median.

That means AI generated content will always drift toward the middle. The safe choice. The expected beat. The familiar arc.

Storytelling is supposed to do the opposite. The best stories break patterns. They go where the audience does not expect. They find the edge not the center.

I have spent years building AI systems professionally. I understand how these models work from the inside. That perspective changed how I think about writing.

When I wrote the AI character in my screenplay I made a deliberate choice. I did not write AI the way movies usually portray it. No sentience. No robot uprising. Instead I wrote AI that behaves the way real AI actually behaves. It optimizes. It finds patterns. It makes decisions that are technically correct but miss the point entirely.

That gap between optimization and understanding is where the real tension lives. And it is a tension that most scripts about AI completely ignore because they default to the familiar version.

Which brings it back to convergence. If we let AI tools push storytelling toward the center we lose the edges. We lose the unexpected choices that make stories actually matter.

The writers who understand how AI actually works have an advantage right now. Not because they can use AI to write faster. Because they can see the convergence effect happening and write against it.

Curious if anyone else is noticing this in scripts they are reading. Are you seeing more sameness. More predictable structure. Would love to hear what is showing up in your work.

Hello everyone,

I’ve reached a pivotal stage in developing my series THE INCISIVE: A Coincidence — a grounded, suspense-driven story layered with psychological tension, moral conflict, and a distinctly African lens.

At this point, the foundation is solid and extensive:

• Pilot script complete.

• Full Season 1 (10-episode arc) written.

• Series Bible & Pitch Deck ready.

• Proof-of-concept script in place.

• Mood board and visual direction established.

I’m now looking to connect with experienced creatives — writers, producers, directors, story editors — who appreciate character-driven, cinematic storytelling and are open to engaging with a project at this stage.

If you’re someone who enjoys diving into material, exchanging notes, and potentially shaping something with real depth and global potential, I’d be open to sharing selected materials for your perspective.

I’m especially interested in:

– High-level script/story feedback.

– Structural and tonal insight.

– Early-stage creative collaboration (where it makes sense).

If the material resonates, I’m always open to exploring organic creative alignment.

Feel free to reach out or comment — I’d value connecting with those who take storytelling seriously.

Thank you in advance

Accepting, absorbing, and utilizing feedback from producers is one of the most important skills a screenwriter can develop. My spec script, CHASING BIGFOOT, was a top-10 finalist in the 2025 Page Awards, but a consistent thread in the feedback was - "Great story, the plot is all there, but it could use more character development."

I knew in my soul that the problem centered on the main character's inner journey. It wasn't aligned correctly with the thematic argument. It also wasn't reflecting the metaphor of the outer journey as well as I wanted it to. 'Chasing Bigfoot' needed to really be about the protagonist discovering herself, as the hero does in all great adventure films.

So, I took that feedback from producers and embarked on one of the hardest screenwriting challenges of my life: rewiring the hero's inner journey, while keeping the spine of their outer journey largely intact.

The process was difficult, but the results were gratifying, because once my main character found her center, the other characters did too.

It remains to be seen whether the operation was a success, but the fact that the logline now reads like the high-concept story it was always meant to be gives me hope.

Logline: A skeptical mother and her idealistic daughter must team up to rescue Grandpa, a Bigfoot tour guide, after he's kidnapped by a ruthless hunter chasing the ultimate prize.

Time to get it out there and see what happens!