CoverMyScript.com will have a vendor table at The Great American PitchFest in the great hall on Saturday. We will be providing on-the-spot consultations, one-sheet help, pitch prep and many other services. Stop on by and say hello!
Here’s a list of what we’re offering:
Can’t wait to see you there!
June is a very exciting month! It marks two very important occasions: The Great American Pitchfest and Screenwriter Karaoke’s 1st Anniversary!
CoverMyScript.com is so proud and honored to be participating in the 7th Annual Great American Pitchfest. For those of you unfamiliar with The Great American Pitchfest, it is a yearly event at the Burbank Marriott where hundreds of writers pitch en masse to hundreds of production companies. It’s an exciting, frenzied, energy-packed event and we at CoverMyScript.com are so proud to be a part of it in two ways.
Saturday, June 26th, CoverMyScript.com will be on site with a team of talented, speedy story analysts from 9am until 5 pm to help you meet your Sunday pitch time crunch. We will be offering a variety of on-the-spot services from one-sheet construction, query writing, as well as last-minute pitch prep consults to help you hone your skills. With prices starting at $20, there’s a service to fit any budget. We will be accepting credit cards through paypal as well as cash for easy transactions.
There are many seminars to check out from 9 am until 5 pm with something for every writer. Then stick around for Screenwriter Karaoke! A fun networking event for screenwriters that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Have a couple of drinks and sing your heart out. We promise we won’t judge. We can’t sing either. ;-p
Not sure what to sing? Here’s the Screenwriter Karaoke Song List for PitchFest.
Saturday, June 26th @ 6 PM
Marriott Burbank Hotel & Convention Center
Room “Academy Two”
2500 N. Hollywood Way, Burbank, CA 91505
AND LATER COME OUT TO OUR REGULAR SPOT SARDO’S AFTER 10 PM. Just a short ride in town.
Sardo’s Grill and Lounge
259 N. PASS AVE.
BURBANK, CA 91505
What are the rules?
* NO COVER CHARGE.
* CASH Bar only.
* Hotel parking has been made available at a discounted rate of $14 to attendees.
* 21 and over only. Please bring ID and be prepared to show it.
* Have fun, drink , sing and connect!
Come out, make some new friends and meet #scriptchat peeps Jeanne Veillette Bowerman and Zac Sanford who will both be in attendance. It’s a very exciting time and CoverMyScript.com couldn’t be more honored to be apart of this. Hope to see you there!
I am never one to toot my own horn, but I am delighted to share this with all of you.
Every year, the Creative Screenwriting Magazine puts together a list of the best Story Analysts / Script Consultants in the business. This list is comprised of industry professionals nominated for their outstanding service and quality of work.
I am so proud to have been included, with the highest customer satisfaction score possible no less. Knowing that my clients not only nominated me but also said such amazing things is so humbling. This on the heels of the newly launched DOUBLE FEATURE service has proved a very exciting time for Cover My Script!
If you’ve found me today or in the coming months as a result of this directory listing, please let me know. Cover My Script will take care of you!
My first day of Screenwriting 101 at Tisch, my teacher stood before us, a motley collection of wannabes, wearing mostly black. He gave us his non-negotiable screenwriting rules:
And for whatever reason, those five tips resonated with me. To my credit, I’ve never pulled a Deus Ex Machina because I knew it was a cheap punch, lazy writing. When you use one, you’re, in essence, screwing your audience out of seeing the protagonist have to struggle; which is really the best part. You throw a life raft to help your character, and then he doesn’t have to try and swim. He’s succeeded simply because you, an unseen “hand of god,” helped him. It’s one of those cop outs that always makes me angry.
Rising from the footlights of the ancient Greek stage, Dues Ex Machnia was never acceptable or enjoyed even during its inception. It was so maligned, in fact, as a storytelling device, even on opening night in ancient Greece, literary critics complained about its use, saying that it ruined the story for them.
For example: your protagonist is about to drown, he’s in a small box that’s quickly filling with water. He is going to die. That is, until a tsunami comes from out of nowhere, breaking open the container and freeing our hero into a sun-shiny tomorrow. He didn’t have to try to get out of the box. The box opened on its own, due to circumstances outside of his control. To borrow a phrase from the Bluth family, “That’s a freebie.”
I mostly never think about Dues Ex Machina as a device because I refuse to acknowledge it as a screenwriting tool. That was until yesterday when I re-watched the 1981 “Clash of the Titans.” For some reason, I saw this beloved movie in a new light.
The perfectly cheesy Perseus, played by Harry Hamlin, is LITERALLY moved around throughout the story by ACTUAL GODS. In this instance, Deus Ex Machina wasn’t a lazy go-to, it was an integral and literal story point. So, it got me thinking, in a world where there are few absolutes, is a Deus Ex Machina device always a bad thing?
An old article of mine “The Six Deadly Script Sins” has recently resurfaced, and some of the comments were that writers wanted less about the do’s and don’ts of “presenting” your script to agents / prod co’s for consideration, but rather they wanted to know about the do’s and don’ts of writing. So, here are my newest Six Deadly Script Sins, only these are about the craft of screenwriting, not the submission process.
1) Have one ending – Jaws ends beautifully.
The end. There’s no more, just one end. There is no need for a tag, and then a tag’s tag, and then a button on the end of the final tag. Just decide what the end of your movie is and commit to it. It’s exhausting trying to navigate more than one proper conclusion. It also makes you seem indecisive and amateurish as a writer.
2) Have an active protagonist – You character should always be doing something. They have to be the catalyst that propels the story forward. Allowing supplemental characters to cause havoc surrounding the main character is good story development and excellent to add plot complications, but you can’t rest on that alone. Set up your protagonist with a singular goal from the outset and have him work towards achieving it the whole script. It will give your protagonist interesting depth as well as create a built in plot device. Also try a MacGuffin if that better suits your needs.
3) If you don’t outline you’ll die. Well not really, but it is serious. Always. Always. Even if by the end of your first draft you’ve completely gone another direction, write the outline anyway. It’s good homework for you to know what the story is. It’s important that you, the writer, understand the full breadth of your characters and the over arching story. An outline is a horrible, tedious thing, but it’s good for you. It’s the brussel sprouts of writing. Just eat them and shut up.
4) Stop worrying about the writing and start worrying about the content. Yes your script should be well written. It should be properly formatted and in the correct font. But that isn’t the end. Your script needs to be concise, visual and above all convey a complete story. Spend less time worrying about how beautifully your action passages read, and think more about the content. You’ll find that you’ll feel less stressed when you realize pretty prose is for novels.
5) Don’t be vanilla. Yes, 90% of movies have the same beats and structure. I know you’re all “But my script…” yeah yeah, no. Your script is the same basic structure as everyone else’s whether you choose to believe it or not. It’s not that your story isn’t special, it’s just that there’s everyone else in the world with a story in their heart that probably touches on some similar beats. What will make you stand out are the details. A utilitarian scene is often necessary to give information or move the story along. That is the perfect time to add weird, quirky details if it’s a comedy. Throw in extra layers to your joke by building in visual references to complement your dialogue. That way you’re effectively hiding the fact that you need this scene to move from A-B, but at least it was interesting and unexpected. That way you’re getting more bang for your buck. I love when you get more for your money. Add the details. It’s worth your time.
6) You’re not Tarantino. You’re not Diablo Cody. You’re not either Gilmore Girl. I don’t care how cool your friends think you are. I don’t care that you once waited on Jane Lynch while you were a cashier at a Bookstar. You are you and as such you are special. Quit trying to write preciously clever dialogue that is pervasive throughout your whole script. If you have one mouthy teenager who says the coolest, hippest street ever. Awesome. Give her her own voice. She deserves it. But if mouthy teen’s mom, the green grocer, and an alien from Neptune all have the same patois, it grows immediately tiresome. Find a voice unique to each character. Allow each character to be rich and full. Don’t make them spew semi-cool dialogue out of every pore just so you, as a writer, can seem relevant. It’s just totes, lame peeps.
There’s tons more. As I think of them or as people comment I can certainly write more and expand on this as requested.
