By Blake Snyder.  Publisher: Michael Wiese Productions.  Book review by David S. Lee   Blake Synder’s Save The Cat! is a succinct guide on screenwriting from the perspective of an actual working screenwriter who has sold numerous screenplays. The book is broken up into 8 chapters, covering concept, character, genre, structure, visual outlining, immutable laws [...]

August 27th, 2011 will see a first for our publisher.  Michael Wiese Productions is putting on their first-ever conference about The Future of Story, taking place at LA Center Studios in downtown Los Angeles.  Pen Densham will personally be leading a panel along with several other top MWP authors at this all-day event. In anticipation [...]

20 MASTER PLOTS AND HOW TO BUILD THEM By Ronald B. Tobias. Publisher: F.W Publications (October 2003). Review by Darshan Kembhavi ‘20 Master plots and how to build them’ is a broad overview of the various ways to strategize your writing plans based on the plot you are planning to work on. I personally never [...]

In my book, Riding the Alligator, I include an “instant library” of book reviews by my graduate film students.  Based on the positive feedback we received from those, I decided to continue to share more reviews of other books you might find useful right here on the website.  Below is an assessment of On Writing [...]

By Pen Densham FEBRUARY 23, 2011 I have immense respect and empathy for those of you willing to act. As a writer-director, I get to hide behind the camera and send my scripts out to audition for me. You are visibly and personally exposed from the audition to the edit, yet you frequently sacrifice control [...]

In my book, Riding the Alligator, I include an “instant library” of book reviews by my graduate film students.  Based on the positive feedback we received from those, I have decided to continue to share more reviews of other books you might find useful right here on the website.  The first one is below, an [...]

My good friend, former Trilogy television executive and current Director of Development for Universal Cable Productions, Ellen Rand, was kind enough to share this compiled list of available trainee programs for my USC students.  I thought it was such a great list I decided to share that with my web readers: WRITERS PROGRAMS ABC Daytime [...]

When John Watson and I first came to Hollywood, we decided to meet with the marketing analysis people at Universal. We asked them one question: what do audiences want in their feature films?

There is no right way to approach scriptwriting – and there is no wrong way. Approach the process as an exciting exploration of what best brings out your creativity.

Want to sum up the most powerful approach to screenwriting in a single word: “PASSION” Here are some reasons that passion matters so much to screenwriting success: