Cheeky Chucky describes the problem of writing believable horror movie victims as a fight between two opposing forces:“Horror writers need these people capable enough that you root for them, but useless enough that they die, or wind up at t…
David E. Kelley likes a courtroom. Who can blame him? He went to law school, his first writing job was on LA Law, and he created (among twenty other legendary TV series) The Practice, Boston Legal, Harry's Law, Presumed Innocent, The Lincol…
At what point does a monster become frightening for what they do instead of what they represent? Can writers find sympathy in a slasher? In our previous Inneresting about monstrous characters that also earn the audience's sympathy, we looke…
Monstrous characters aren't necessarily evil. Sometimes they're misunderstood, the targets of evil, or operating on a non-human set of instructions that seem inscrutable at first glance.When a writer wants to tell the story with a creature
In Hollywood, when one of your best friends works on a movie, you're gonna hear about it a lot. You get all the details, from their excitement when it gets the green light, venting through the craziness of production, and surviving the carn…
On the surface, introducing a dystopian world feels like making sure an audience knows key terminology and what it looks like in the setting of the story. But the depth of world building comes when those layers of detail point the audience
At the time that this episode was recorded, the 2025 L.A. fires had just ravaged the city, from the Palisades all the way to Altadena. As if it weren’t already a rocky time in the industry, now, writers faced another question: Does what I’m…
The screenplay format is exacting and regimented. It can intimidate new writers and old pros alike because at some point all of your wonderful ideas need to be transformed into sluglines and action lines and dialogue.But, before you start w…
In some stories the future isn't bright, but you gotta wear mirrored shades. We're talking dystopian storytelling and the discomfort of when far-flung futures start to feel all too real. Are our dystopian visions getting worse? Do storytell…
A character's transformation within a story takes time. It's the accumulation of many moments over time, layering and building on each other.Ideally those moments mesh with other parts of the story already in play. As the character navigate…
Once again, we're putting together a highlights issue to look at what you, the readers, are finding inneresting!Looking back at the most popular links we've shared over the last few months, a few themes seem to emerge. We've grouped these p…
Yes yes, Ali Barthwell is insanely funny and has talent bursting out of her eyeballs, but the thing I want to celebrate her for the most is how she's built her career. Living in LA, you always hear stories about the creatives who live in ot…