Until you took the time to respond to some personal emails from me and pass on some of your tried and true way of your structure process – plus the hundreds of posts you have pasted on your site – everything I have been doing over the last 14 years finally clicked.

You have helped me take that step over the edge to where it all makes sense. Since then i have rewritten two of my scripts to fit perfectly to the structure, and I mean to the page. And just recently, both of those scripte have been optioned.

No joke.

And I’m not patting myself on the back, I am patting you on the back. You are a great shining light in a sea of darkness, that swears.

Love ya like a brother form another mother, Unk.

Cheers.

Scottie screenwriter.

Come back refreshed and they maybe all those biatches will get the point. Yeah right on that last part, right?

Tell me who they are and I’ll rough them up, Internet style.

Thanks for all the great “Golden” information that you pass on SELFLESSLY. Much appreciated… And for those fuckers!!!! Back off and do something else instead of wasting peoples time!

If you want to become a teacher you go get a teaching job and take a few classes and do some paperwork and BAM, you’re a teacher. If you want to be a secretary or a lawyer or a doctor or even a news reporter, you go to school and learn the trade then you go find a job. And even though not everyone is as good at it as others, they all find jobs.

But screenwriting doesn’t work like that, and I think part of the problem is that most newbies don’t realize it. I certainly didn’t. You can’t go to school and learn the trade and then hold up your degree and go “Okay! I’m ready for my job now!” because nobody cares.

SO it’s a shock to everybody’s system that instead of on-the-job training like so many other professions, screenwriting requires extensive pre-job training before anyone will even consider hiring you. It surprised a lot of people.

Sure, it’s great – perhaps necessary – to get advice but screenwriting is not something that anyone can REALLY help you with.

My brain is on fire with all the reading – and writing – I do. IF I were you – and I’m not, I only get periodic visits – I would collect a list of books and send links to them.

Writers have to help themselves.

I totally enjoy your posts as they do make me think, but I try not to monopolize anyone’s time.

Rant ended.

Keep writing as writing is the revealing of the soul.

I have a LOT of faith… Some people tell me I have too much faith. LOL.

Keep learning.

I need to apologize to several lurkers out there who left comments. They ended up in my spam section.

I painstakingly went through the entire list of over 2,000 spam entries since yesterday and marked the 6 comments from those of you who’ve never commented before that they were in fact NOT SPAM and then, after doing so, I deleted all the spam that was left and none of your comments showed up.

I guess it’s time to upgrade.

Again, I apologize.

Unk

I guess it’s really more of a cross between some of the comments and a lot of the emails I get. LOL. I go ahead and read ‘em and then wonder why this person isn’t doing something a little more productive with their time.

Also… I get a LOT of “after the fact” comments… New people that find the site and then make comments months after the original post. I have to wade through these along with some of the spam shit that makes it and I don’t know… After a while you just start wondering why you even do this shit. Hell, I could have written at least a couple of more screenplays instead of almost two years of posts.

I’m not whining about it… I just get tired. This site gets a phenomenal amount of daily traffic for some reason and so of course, you get the emails and the additional comments. No… The regular readers are very cool. People I wouldn’t mind working with.

You included you left wing punkinhead. LOL.

Ann,

That made me laugh! Carbon dating. Never tried it. Does it work? Will visit soon.

And the reason your post didn’t show up right away is because after a while, WordPress treats it like a new email address apparently. All new comments from new email addresses have to be approved. Unfortunately, because of the amount of spam that still gets through with all the protection I have, I have to wade through the garbage to get to the cream.

Tom,

Welcome and I’m glad you’re getting something out of it.

Hey… I actually don’t feel quite as TIRED now… LOL.

Unk(alish)

This is a great analogy. I’ve been writing screenplays for about 10 years now. But just recently I’ve began to fully understand instruction I’ve been reading about for the past decade. Like “rewriting is throwing away 80% of your script.”

I read that or was told this more than a few times. I understood it and accepted it… you have to change a lot of stuff when rewriting.

But it wasn’t until I worked on the rewrite of my latest script and found that 80% of the stuff from the first draft was now gone, that I fully understood that rewriting is throwing away 80% of your script and just how much of screenwriting happens after draft one is done. And just how intensive and seemingly endless that process is.

There are other examples, like “kill your babies.” When I first heard this, I understood it but still kept scenes I liked in a script just because I really liked the scene. It wasn’t until I understood that what makes a successful script is the flow and arc of the story and everything needs to work toward that goal, that I started to cut stuff I liked but realized wasn’t meant for that particular script.

I’ve pointed a few people who have just started screenwriting to this site. I don’t know of any book or other Web site that has so much great screenwriting information in one place. I stumbled to across it relatively recently, so much of what’s on here I already knew, but it always helps reading it again.

But I think the thing I learned most here is that writing is a personal process. You learn all this stuff and you figure out how YOU are going to make it work. In fact, that all-caps “YOU” is probably the defining image of this site for me.

So, I guess I understand your frustration, but even if you never share another insight into the art of screenwriting, what you’ve already written is amazing and should serve as the educational foundation for any aspiring screenwriter. It’s just great stuff.

Thanks

I only date men fifty or older.

Carbon Date, that is.

Miss you! Stop in and see me. My life is a major disaster and I need some Unkalish.