I just finished Sherry Peters' Silencing Your Inner Saboteur. I've bought a lot of writing books over the years, some have been awesome and some haven't been so awesome. Sherry's involvement with the Odyssey Writing…
Half the Battle is Showing Up
A few weeks back I went to the gym with a friend of mine. We're both getting up there in years and we're both carrying around more weight than we should. I've been hitting the…
The Rules
When you write in genre - especially Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror/Paranormal, it's exciting because we get to create limitless worlds. The only limits are those in your own imagination, and you're free to explore pretty much anything you…
Getting Unstuck: Up the Conflict and Make a…
I'm deep in the throes of writing the second installment of the WITCH CITY series, WITCH CITY: VISIONARY. Being human - just like you, and yes, I mean you, I hit a plot point and…
Against the Best
Everyone feels insecure when up against the best. - Kurt Belcher, zombies, props and backgrounds, THE TRIP - THE ANIMATED MOTION PICTURE. We just recorded a session for my first feature, THE TRIP - THE…
The Power of Music
Back when I was in college, we'd occasionally have a professor come in and play classical music while we were studying. They would tell us this helped us concentrate. These little interludes never lasted long,…
That Which Is Not Explained
Watch enough movies and read enough books, and you're bound to run into some ambiguous themes - where something is important to the story, quickly touched upon, and then that's it. Audiences will go along…
The Secret Adaptation Formula
Every so often I meet other writers who hear I write novels, comics and screenplays. They're interested in taking their work from one format and adapting it to another. This is a great exercise and…
The Energy Bucket
This post started as yet another rant about how you need to work to achieve artistic success. I thought about the other version of this post most of the day and decided I'm going to…
How Much Description?
I don't see people talk often about how much you need to describe your characters, to this time around let's talk about it. The rules are different across screenplays and prose - if you don't…
The Hard Road
A friend of mine is working on a horror story. In it he has a female protagonist and he questioned whether the trials he was putting her through were too tough...so let's explore what we…
Chappie: Robot Scifi Done Well
I was a huge fan of DISTRICT 9, and when I saw Neill Blomkamp was directing another scifi feature I hoped it would deliver on the high quality of his previous film. I was not…
Group Dynamics in Fiction
Most stories will revolve around more than one character. Sure, you'll have one character who's central to the story and who basically owns it - but you need more people for this character to interact…
How Long Will This Take?
I was conversing with another indie lamenting about his sales figures (which aren't much different from mine - depressingly low). It got me thinking... Back when I was in high school there was a show…
Story Anti-Patterns – And How to Fix Them
In programming we have a concept called an anti-pattern. This is a flawed approach at fixing a problem that causes more problems than the original issue it attempted to fix. Because of their ubiquitous nature,…
My Writing Bookshelf
I've been writing most of my life, and seeing as I've been around a while I've managed to read lots of writing books. Some are good, but a few have really left a mark on…
In Their Own Eyes
I'm a big fan of Linda Seger's books. If you're a writer, Creating Unforgettable Characters must be on your bookshelf. If it's not you're really missing out. One of the bits Seger shares in Creating…
The Hot Scene
When I first started writing, I worked primarily on action stories. These featured lots of exploding objects at the expense of character development (I'd sheepishly admit most of my early characters were probably cardboard by…
Talking the Talk
Writing good dialog is tough. People in real life don’t talk the same way as they do in fiction, and there are different considerations whether you’re writing prose or script. In this post we’ll explore…
Embrace the Absurdity
2015 saw me work on my first animated film, In the Dark (Full video at end of post). It was my first animation and (as of the time I'm writing this) it's been the most…
The Night Will End
It's the thick of the holiday season where I live. In the northern hemisphere it's winter, and the sun has retreated leaving us with shorter days and really long nights. It got me thinking about…
The Value of Play
About a year ago, I bought a few odds and ends for my filmmaking hobby. (Yeah, I'd love to call it a business but right now my accountant tells me I have a fun hobby.…
The Multitasking Fallacy
Writing is a process. We spend hours, months, days or sometimes years working on our art. It takes effort, it takes energy, and above all, it takes time. It's not easy, it's work. Many find…
Creating Scenes
We as writers have a very important job as we work - we create scenes. Think about that for a minute. Whether you read a book or you watch a movie, someone had to write…