"As a romance channel screenwriter, Nora Hamilton knows the formula for love better than anyone. When her too-good-to work husband leaves her and their two kids, Nora turns her marriage's collapse into cash and writes the best script of her life; it's picked up for the big screen and set to film on location at her 100-year-old-home. The morning after shooting wraps and the crew leaves, Nora finds actor Leo Vance, who played her husband, on her porch...

Learn the mystery of character, character dictating plot, character information, biographies, real characters vs. fictional characters, writing a franchise character, rules to break and not to break. Subjects covered include: Who should be your protagonist? Does plot or character come first? How do you find the right characters to suit your needs? How do you get a character to do what you want? How to you get your characters to do what they want?

"In this thoroughly modern take on the timeless tale of a struggling Cinderella who finds her prince charming at the eleventh hour, an Oscar-winning actor and an aspiring screenwriter attempt to make a relationship work away from the Hollywood spotlight. Working as the personal assistant to one of Hollywood's cruelest divas has left Amanda Queen more determined than ever to sell her screenplay and gain her independence. In the meantime, she'll settle...

This program teaches highlighting the good parts and trouble spots, research, visualizing and dramatization, non-fiction vs. fiction, the echo effect, online reasearch vs. physical, changing directions, genre material, staying fresh and externalizing characters' thoughts. Subjects covered include:--What to include. --How to avoid the 200 page screenplay. --How faithful should you be to the original? --Is it easier to adapt fiction or non-fiction,...

Believing she is realizing her dreams when her sitcom is bought, television writer Ruth Saunders finds her happiness threatened by demanding actors and executives as well as an unrequited crush on her boss and her septuagenarian grandmother's upcoming wedding.

Alessio Rinaldi, a 25-year-old director, is commissioned by a producer to write the script of his first movie with Ubaldo Terzani, a well-known horror novelist. Alessio moves into Terzani's house to start this collaboration, and a strange relationship of psychological dependence grows between them: Ubaldo Terzani unveils his dark side, and Alessio falls into a state of insanity ruled by the script they are creating and the nightmares he has because...

During the pandemic, an aging screenwriter is holed up in a coastal South Carolina town with his beloved second wife, Peaches. He's been binge-eating for a year and developed a notable rapport with the local fast-food chain Hippo King. He struggles to work on a ludicrous screenplay about a Nazi attempt to kidnap FDR and, naturally, an article for Etymology Today on English words of Carthaginian origin. He thinks he has Covid. His wife thinks he is...

In the third installment in a trilogy of memoirs, the screenwriter shares anecdotes about his time in Hollywood, from holding hands with Cybill Shepherd to watching Jennifer Garner's audition tape.

"How far would you be willing to go... for permission? Set in the crime-, riot-, and earthquake-racked Los Angeles of the 1990s, Permission tells the story of a screenwriter on the brink of success, derailed by a destructive marriage that drives him into a breakdown. Medicating his condition with a bottomless plunge into prostitutes and cocaine (his unlikely vehicles for self-analysis and personal revelation) he uses what he learns - and the new relationship...

The legendary creator of iconic television programs All in the Family, Sanford and Son, Maude, Good Times, The Jeffersons, and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Norman Lear remade our television culture, while leading a life of unparalleled political, civic, and social involvement. Sharing the wealth of Lear's ninety years, this is a memoir as touching and remarkable as the life he has led.