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Read three pages of any script and you already know if the writer can write great dialogue or not. In fact, in many cases, the first page tells you. How good is your dialogue? Good enough to sell the script by the third page? Believe it or not, that's happened many times in this business.

Today's question is... ...How do you know your dialogue is ready? In Part One of this Article, we'll look at three very important aspects of dialogue and you'll get to rate your dialogue.   A. Dialogue that expresses character This is the most important of all. Does your dialogue fully express the unique character traits

    Often, when I ask a top writer how a movie came about, they'll say something like "I was in a meeting with Tom Cruise where we..." or "I got invited to this party where I met Jerry Bruckheimer and we set up a meeting to..." or "I was working with a producer who

Surviving A Story Meeting At some point in the future, you could easily find yourself in a story meeting about one of your scripts or you may be part of a writing team who is creating a TV series. Sounds great, doesn't it? There you'll be, sitting with a room full of assistants, creative execs,

  What's the main conflict of your story?  Is it a powerful force that engages the emotions of your reader or does it leave them feeling flat and let down?   THE MAIN CONFLICT is one of those areas where a minor improvement can often make a huge difference in the quality of the read.

Want to add a little comedy to your screenplay? One good place to look is the props. Yes, you do have props -- every item your characters touch is a prop. But not every prop will be funny. This is all about selection and incongruity. Don't worry, it is easier than it sounds. Consider these

Script Magazine listed us as #1 in their upcoming issue in an article titled "Top 9 Online Screenwriting Courses, Plus One."  You can see it in the July/August issue that has already been sent out to their online subscribers and will soon be in the book stores. Our thanks to Script Mag.

When your lead character is placed in a terrible spot, entertaining things happen.  The audience worries about him. They feel sympathy for him.  They want to know what is going to happen to him.  Why? Because you, the God of your script, set it up that way. Or did you? Sometimes, it appears that writers

When it comes to writing great dialogue, I believe the more options you have, the better.  One of the toughest things to do is stare at a screen hoping that something brilliant will just pop out of your mind and somehow fit the script you're writing. Instead, I'd rather have many options.  Today, we're going

  Craig James here from the ISA. I recently had the chance to interview Hal Croasmun of ScreenwritingU about loglines and felt this was so good that I just had to share it with our group. CRAIG: Hey Hal, you've met a lot of producers and pitched scripts. What are the basics that have to