Nikolas John: Script consultant, script supervisor and script coordinator in Los Angeles, California.

Maurice Vaughan Look at 54-59, no dialogue. I remember in the film, it was like five minutes of Norman cleaning up the shower scene and disposing the car in the swamp. Such a great movie!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et9m9GwLp7g

I have to watch this one Maurice Vaughan and add this to my tool box for my horror/thriller flicks.

So much content online say they're the same..thanks

But I am a newbie! I am SUCH a newbie! I'm an oldie but a newbie. I have a lot to learn.

To get better at one-sheets and synopses, I like to read the plot summaries on Wikipedia after I watch movies. It helps to see how large plots can be synthesized into short summaries that give the gist without overwriting details. Just remember not to spoil the ending on your one-sheets and keep the intrigue alive!

Will someone PLEEASE write a live-action "Nightmare on Tim Burton Day"? Thank you

That's great and cool to see! Kurt Patino

Greg Wong Hi Greg, my wife saw it on the flight to Sydney last year. She said it was a lovely film and beautifully shot. She didn’t know who the Cinematographer was, but it was definitely her kind of film and not mine!

Geoff Hall I'm sure your wife knows you better! The DoP is Felix Wiedemann, I'm not familiar with him. It is a lovely film, has strong emotional elements, well written, a story that is driven forward, little to no dead scenes, good setups and subsequent payoffs. Even if you don't like these types of films, it's a good study of how a story can be written.

Greg Wong hahahaha!

As for proofreading, Tamara Rees, I use the Read Aloud feature in Microsoft Word. If there's a typo, grammatical error, or story issue, it'll stand out. I also read along with the Read Aloud feature.

Thank you all for your input! Looks like it's a yes for WriterDuet, so I'll check that out soon. And I suppose I'll have to save up for final draft!

I use WriterDuet myself. But, I'm doing my own proofreading for errors regarding grammar, vocabulary and syntax. I've been doing enough revisions of my own work that I'm used to this tedious part of writing now. lol

@Emily J That's an amazing story. I don't know if I can do all-nighter's anymore, it really takes a toll on you throughout the week. Maybe it's just me. Also, I never knew there was a thing as a writer's retreat until now. lol...

@Kiril Maksimoski That's rough, and I agree that the younger we are, the more hungrier we are at dishing out work. But with age and experience comes wisdom and you realize that it's always best to have everything planned out. I realized that I was able find many plot holes in my story by taking my time and having it written out as a road map. What's your process now?

24 hours is nuts. But 2-4 weeks is doable. Just make sure you start with an outline. If you have your beats in order and have already have a clear picture of what needs to happen, I'm absolutely confident saying that a script can be written in 3 days.

Awesome! Hungary sure has produced some amazing work over the years. Curious if you could suggest some of the "unique visual direction" you admire in other directors/companies? It would helpful to know what you're into.

Hey Nikolas, thanks for asking! I'm very much into artistic horror such as Cronenberg, Gaspar Noe, Haneke but I'm huge John Carpenter fan as well. Here in Hungary the genre filmmaking is not so prominent unfortunately - I'm hoping to change it haha - but we have a few very interesting film directors like Bela Tarr or Attila Janisch.

Great to connect Demeter Lorant!

Isn't everything an actor does sort of a cultural appropriation? I mean, they're always pretending to be someone else

"Culture" is simply a set of ideas and therefore Cultural appropriation is not a real thing. It is a whacky concept pushed by people who love to keep society divided against itself. It's an academic political concept used by people who specifically want to control a group they ostensibly belong to , in an effort to make people in that group feel bad that others find their ideas valuable. That's it. I am Romanian, which is to say, culturally Roman (that's a simplification of course). If cultural appropriate were a thing, I should be offended and claim injury at everyone's use of the alphabet itself, the Julian Calendar, the basis of much of the globe's legal systems, and in fact much of the language we speak and political concepts we practice - on and on and on. But it's not a thing, it's just a a whacky concept.

Nikolas John and Shadow, yes, agreed...it's called playing a role. We either embrace it or eschew it completely.

Welcome Reid Rathore :)

Welcome Reid Rathore! Keep working it!

Welcome, Reid!

Allison Caldwell You bet!

If you don't want to work on one piece of writing, work on one that is strictly for fun: Write a thoughtful email to your Grandma. Make a list of former lovers. Copy out your favorite song lyrics. Sometimes it's better to outflank the writing before it can mess with your head

Travis Seppala That's a great way of looking at it too. It might just come off as an excuse to avoid writing your story or whatever else you have going on.

Hi Patricia. There are a lot of great people in this community. Never hesitate to reach out. I would be happy to read your theater piece.

Sounds great, Patricia Stepp. I like to have multiple projects going too. Usually a feature spec script or writing job, pitch deck, and short spec script. What type of Sci-Fi is your Sci-Fi script?

Hi Patty, it's lovely to meet you! I'm happy you felt comfortable coming out of lurker status. We're all here to support each other.

Make your inexperience into an advantage. Art and science have always profited from the people who see things with fresh eyes. Focus on the art and not the industry. Most people in this business get hung up on someone else's idea of what's "good" or "possible". Learn what YOU feel you need, and never be shy to ask for advice.

I have that, in fact I know where some companies like Disney can find new talent.

Great points! If you want to go granular on this, select a monologue or dialogue that you think is exceptionally powerful or beautiful in some way, and then READ IT ALOUD WHILE TRANSCRIBING IT WORD-FOR-WORD. One clause at a time, sentence by sentence. This will actually allow you to follow the writer's own internal rhythms and get an intimate "feel" for the writer's musicality. Supposedly Hunter Thompson copied out all of "The Great Gatsby" in longhand before he wrote "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." These may seem like strange bedfellow, but the connection really comes through in famous passage/soliloquy about the 60s and "the wave rolling back" (also beautifully performed by Johnny in the Gilliam adaptation).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUgs2O7Okqc

Back when I shot my first film and got to meet Steve Guttenberg, he beamed a big grin at me as we shook hands and said, "Great script! I love the pacing!".

In my opinion, good pacing comes from structure; overall story structure to an extent, but mainly scene structure. You need all those beats to be doing something and their rhythm needs to be inline with the emotions playing out. Your pacing is also subject to your voice too. Some writers are higher paced than others, while some go slow and steady. I've always liked the way Tarantino stated the characters are talking fast in the opening coffee shop robbery scene. It really helps get across how he imagines his writing playing out on screen.

Making a few movies has helped me see at what kind of pace I write too. It's always interesting to compare page count to run time. I know my writing runs around 10% over a minute per page when filmed, so I account for that on assignments.

As for watching a movie and determining the script's pace from that. I don't know. The actors, director, and editor play a huge factor in determining the end result. Some actors deliver their lines slow, a director can have a very different vision to the writer, and a good editor can pretty much do anything when it comes to speeding up or slowing things down - they're not called dream fixers for nothing.

Much like structure, the term pacing is often interchanged or used for the big overall picture, which is often misleading. As someone who reads hundreds of scripts a year, pacing starts at the scene and sentence structure level; in other words the cadence on the page. And when it's not there, the script is a drag to get through. This has a cumulative effect on the scene, which in turn builds the overall pace.

Susan Kouguell is terrific (and an old friend) she's worth a read.

To add on to Nikolas' excellent point, dialogue is often the most overlooked aspect of pacing, but masters of it, such as Sorkin, look at it musically and choose the placement of each word very carefully.

More broadly speaking pacing should also be informed by tone and genre, which is perfected as the film goes through each iteration of production.

It's worthwhile for every screenwriter to sit in an editing session (although nowadays most editors work remotely in their home caves), once you sit through how an editor approaches story and pacing, it will (hopefully) change the way your write, because you will see the cuts and the scene-to-scene segue much more intuitively.

If it's Steve Martin's "Jerk" it sounds awesome

Actually, it's more like an Evil Dead-Ash Williams kind of thing.

https://youtu.be/rTaJGuKvHmA?si=bTfTGCkijVll_gec

We Flip the Script on Alex Ferrari with Mystery Guest Host // Indie Film Hustle

Indie Film Hustle Podcast ~ RICHARD BOTTO... interviewing ALEX

I have one every night when I walk down 9th from Figueroa to Broadway. Ghosts everywhere.

LAST ONE!!

https://youtu.be/cmqdl16HZBM?si=Fde_8WGhQGDdmUB4

NEXT LEVEL SOUL PODCAST - SUZANNE GEESEMAN

My advice to any student is to take the opportunity to do all sorts of things that are waaaay out of your comfort zone. Not only does it expand you, but once you start working it's often hard to find those opportunities in a work environment. You titled this learning to fly - that's the perfect title. Learning to fly is difficult, takes you totally out of yur comfort zone and teaches you to rely on yourself - perfect! (I know because I got my pilot's license a few years ago.)

Arhynn Descy so good and true… I’m going to be taking this advice! Thank you!

Make as many movies as possible while you're there