The Last Reveal

I don't agree with the advice to write every day. It's true you need to hone your craft, but writing every day, inspired or not, leads to frustration and what some folks call "Writer's Block."

“There are known nouns, these are nouns that we know and know us; there are unknown nouns, that is to say there are certain nouns that we don't know; but there are also known un-nouns. These are things like the Un-cola."

"A play that can be described in one sentence should be written in one."

---Edward Albee

Your script is flawless

Poignant... Funny... True... Perfect...

Here are our notes

---Unknown

"When forced to work within a strict framework the imagination is taxed to its utmost-and will produce its richest ideas. Given total freedom the work is likely to sprawl"

New! Now Available!

The first book on screenwriting in years to offer something new.

LATERAL SCREENWRITING: Using the Power of Lateral Thinking to Write Great Movies

Screenwriters and storytellers have been looking for deeper insight to their craft for years. Nothing truly new has been written in decades... until now.

"Lateral Thinking" is a process for generating creative solutions to real-world problems. Coined by author and business consultant, Edward de Bono, it has helped the left-brain worlds of business and government to revolutionize, achieving unheard-of success.

Lee Matthias returns this concept to its origins, the right-brain world of creative expression. Not another "how-to" on writing for Hollywood, this book decodes the creative process itself, applying it to storytelling in general and screenwriting in particular. LATERAL SCREENWRITING is packed with ideas, examples, stories, and the genius of the world's greatest filmmakers. Rather than re-hashing a thousand other works on the "how" of screenwriting, this book helps writers find their best ideas toward writing the greatest movies never-yet-made.

THE PANDORA PLAGUE

The theft of an unusual pocket-watch brings famed magician, Harry Houdini, together with the world's foremost consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes. When it leads to the appearance of a mysterious locked strong-box, it becomes a case that rocks the British Empire to its core.

A period feast, filled with luminaries of the era, bursting with the raucous energy of a time when the world was throwing off the romanticism of the Victorian Age for the power and dangerous potential of science, new philosophies, and the machine.

Sherlock Holmes is at his peak. The brash, young Houdini challenges all who stand in his way. And Watson, Holmes's chronicler and friend, returns us to a time when the gas was always lit, the Persian slipper always filled with shag, and the game was, once again, and at long last... afoot.

Read THE PANDORA PLAGUE, a tale from the world of Sherlock Holmes, on sale now in an expanded, annotated edition at Amazon.com in Trade Paperback and on Kindle.

Check out all the deals you can get for Kobo E-Books here!

I've just published three "novels" of my screenplays, THE JUPE, FOE, and THE SLEEP OF REASON. These are part of a new effort to put the best new un-produced screenplays before you as movie-length novels. Now you can "read a movie" in about the same amount of time as it would take to see the film. The publisher is Aisle Seat Books. Check them out!

THE JUPE

A family hiding from killers in a small town a thousand miles from home re-opens an old movie palace. As their pursuers close in, their fear awakens something worse within the theater itself.

THE JUPE is available in paperback direct from the publisher, Aisle Seat Books. It's also available at Amazon.com in paperback and for Kindle, at Barnes and Noble for Nook, and for most other E-Book devices at Kobo.

FOE

In a near-future world shattered by an alien invasion, a lone Special Ops soldier, unaware that he's the key to victory, stumbles on a group of disabled military vets holding their abandoned VA Hospital as the invaders lay siege.

FOE is available in paperback direct from the publisher, Aisle Seat Books. It's also available at Amazon.com in paperback and for Kindle, at Barnes and Noble in paperback and for Nook, and for most other E-Book devices at Kobo.

THE SLEEP OF REASON

After his bride disappears on their European honeymoon, Richard Renfield traces her to a castle ruin in the Carpathian mountains, and confronts its undead inhabitants, determined to restore her to life and bring her home. An apocalyptic war of Good versus Evil.

THE SLEEP OF REASON is available in paperback direct from the publisher, Aisle Seat Books. It's also available at Amazon.com in paperback and for Kindle, and at Barnes and Noble for Nook.

Check out my Guest articles on structure and screenwriting at The Story Department, beginning with this one, then Part 2, then, Part 3, and then these: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4!

"There’s a phrase you hear in Hollywood: 'It’s a movie.' I didn’t really understand that phrase when I first came into the business. It’s code for:

"'This script encompasses everything we need it to be: It can attract an actor, it can attract a director, it can be marketed. It’s complete.'"

Screenwriter, Joe Forte, from Tales from the Script, Edited by Peter Hanson and Paul Robert Herman, HarperCollins, p. 40. It's also available on DVD!

Regarding the necessity of the new screenwriter having a distinctive "Voice" for career success, I ran across this quote on the web:

"Scripts aren't meant to be read. They're meant to be shootable.

A voice gets your script into production. Production takes it out."

---Eddie Panta, commenting on ScriptShadow

Of course scripts ARE meant to be read, just not as stand-alone literature.

"...there are no rules in this business, but you break them at your peril."

"Once you accept their money it's no longer YOUR script, and acceptance of that is the key to your serenity."

From Wordlings, found on the web

John Cleese - "Did the Oscars help?"

William Goldman - "No. Eventually, you're alone in a room."