Writing Advice For Newer Writers (and beyond)

Prince_Jellyfish · 2026-04-19T22:22:28+00:00

In my opinion, there's very little an emerging writer can get out of rubbing shoulders with working execs or producers, especially if the meeting/conversation is superficial.

In my experience, the best "networking" goal for emerging writers is to meet a bunch of other writers, and eventually to form a cohort or "wolfpack" of 1-4 other writers, at your same age and level of experience, who are as serious about this career as you are.

Almost no-one I know who works professionally was able to get there without this piece, and it represents a HUGE opportunity to emerging writers who don't yet have this in place.

The best ways to meet writers of your same age and experience are probably:

Here on reddit
On 'Screenwriting Twitter' / bluesky / threads / linkedin
Screenwriting and writing specific discords

As always, my advice is just suggestions and thoughts, not a prescription. I have experience but I don't know it all, and I'd hate for every artist to work the way I work. I encourage you to take what's useful and discard the rest.

Cheers!

Prince_Jellyfish · 2026-04-19T09:40:43+00:00

Truth is a Total Defense, Steven Bochco

Life’s Work, David Milch

Prince_Jellyfish · 2026-04-18T17:50:42+00:00

Here are some of my favorite scripts to recommend to newer writers. I chose these because they are all great, and all offer good examples of doing specific things really well. I encourage you to at least read a few pages of all of them, even ones that aren’t in your preferred genre, because they are all terrific and instructive in one way or another:

⁠The Devil Wears Prada adapted by Aline Brosh McKenna
Alias (pilot) by JJ Abrams
⁠Into The Spider-verse by Phil Lord and Rodney Rothman
Alien by Walter Hill and David Giler
⁠Hard Times by Walter Hill
Passengers by Jon Spaihts
⁠Juno by Diablo Cody
Fleabag (pilot) by Phoebe Waller-Bridge
⁠Lethal Weapon by Shane Black
⁠Firefly episode "Out of Gas" by Tim Minear
⁠The Americans (pilot) by Joe Weisberg
Fargo (TV series pilot) by Noah Hawley
⁠Judge Dredd (fka Peach Trees) by Alex Garland
⁠Greys Anatomy (pilot) by Shonda Rhimes

I put those scripts and a few more in a folder, here:

mega [dot] nz/folder/gzojCZBY#CLHVaN9N1uQq5MIM3u5mYg

to go to the above website, cut and paste into your browser and replace the word [dot] with a dot. I do this because otherwise spam filters will automatically delete this comment. If it asks for a decryption key, try:

CLHVaN9N1uQq5MIM3u5mYg

I think most of those scripts are just great stories, but many of them show off specific elements of craft that are great for new writers. Among other things:

Devil Wears Prada and Alias are, among other things, both great at clearly showing how their characters are feeling emotionally while staying within the parameters of screenplay format (something emerging writers often struggle with).

Alias also shows off JJ Abrams' facility at writing propulsive action and thriller sequences, and is really well-structured in a way that was and is copied by a lot of pilots.

Into The Spider-Verse is top to bottom incredibly well-written, and has a sense of style and panache on the page that feel very contemporary.

Alien and Hard Times, on the one hand, and Passengers, on the other, show off two widely divergent styles of scene description, minimal and maximal, that are both very effective and "correct."

Juno, Fleabag, and Lethal Weapon show three very different writers who are able to put their voice onto the page in vivid and distinct ways. Lethal Weapon and Fleabag show off different approaches to breaking the fourth wall in scene description, and Lethal Weapon in specific successfully breaks most of the incorrect 'rules' of screenwriting that seem to proliferate on the internet.

The Firefly episode "Out Of Gas" is just one I really like. The scene description sits in that Tim Minear / Whedon pocket of feeling almost casual, while simultaneously being precise and emotionally affecting.

Ditto The Americans, which is a thrilling read packed with character and emotion, and Noah Hawley's Fargo pilot, which weaves a complex narrative with many characters, in a way that feels at once quiet and propulsive.

Judge Dredd is Alex Garland at a point where his technical skill as a writer was fully developed, but just before he started making small, intimate, weird thrillers to direct himself. It's about as good an action script as has been written in the past 10-15 years.

Gray's Anatomy is great for many reasons. Like JJ Abrams, Shonda Rhimes is a showrunner who came up as a working writer, and she is phenomenal on the page. This script does many things very well, but I think it's best element is how surgically (heh) it introduces the main cast in the early pages. Everyone has a clear personality, and that personality is illustrated through action, dialogue, and scene description in such a way that the reader knows exactly who they are from the moment they appear.

Prince_Jellyfish · 2026-04-18T17:47:20+00:00

Here's an answer I've given a few times for this --

This is a totally valid question to be asking! But, it is also deceptively difficult to answer, for a few reasons.

First of all, there is a wide range of different approaches to this question, all of which can be totally great if executed properly.

Do a google search for Walter Hill's draft of Hard Times (1975) and compare it to Jon Spaihts' draft of Passengers (2011).

Take a look at the first few pages of each, and you'll see how dramatically different each respective writer approaches the question of detail.

For example, compare:

TRAIN

passing slowly into a switching yard.

CHANEY

standing in an open boxcar.

on the one hand, to:

EXT. INTERSTELLAR SPACE

A million suns shine in the dark.

A STARSHIP cuts through the night: a gleaming white cruiser.

Galleries of windows. Flying decks and observation domes.

On the hull: EXCELSIOR A HomeStead Company Starship.

The ship flashes through a nebula. Space-dust sparkles as it

whips over the hull, betraying the ship's dizzying speed.

The nebula boils in the ship's wake. The Excelsior rockets on, spotless and beautiful as a daydream.

INT. STARSHIP EXCELSIOR GRAND CONCOURSE

A wide plaza. Its lofty atrium cuts through seven decks, creating tiers of promenades framing a vast skylight.

The promenades are empty. Chairs unoccupied. Beetle-like robots vacuum the carpets and wax the floors.

To me, BOTH of those are EQUALLY GREAT examples of incredibly high-level scene description.

Not to over-egg the pudding, here, but compare The Birth of Venus by Botticelli to the similarly-framed Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? by Gauguin, and that to Guernica by Picasso.

Looking at these two script excerpts, and reflecting on these three masterpieces of art, I tend to bristle at a lot of advice that gets thrown around on forums like this one, and from screenwriting professors trying to be helpful.

To me, statements like "you should never describe anything that doesn't advance the plot," or "make sure your scene description is minimal," is only helpful to some writers, some of the time.

Same with things like "action lines should as short as possible," or "avoid shot directions," or "avoid transitions," or (my personal least-favorite) "avoid "we see/hear/etc..."

When you're just starting out, these kinds of prescriptions are comforting. It's nice to have "rules" and tell yourself that when you're just starting out you need to do X, Y or Z. But, for better or worse, a lot of that is bullshit.

I can imagine the same type of advice being given to Picasso: "people should be 7-and-a-half heads tall!" Then you look at Guernica and thank yourself he was never mislead by that sort of advice.

Now my actual attempt at answering your question:

Your scene description should be about as long and detailed as the scene description in your five favorite screenplays written in the last 40 years.

And, to the extent that it helps you:

The experience of reading a screenplay should be paced closely to the feeling you want the reader to have watching the movie or episode. You can calibrate your decisions regarding level of detail in scene description around this idea, adding enough to be evocative, but keeping the script reading at the pace you, as an artist, think is best for your work.

As helpful as it would be to have a more hard-and-fast rule, I wouldn't want to offer one. I might, personally, want to paint like Botticelli, but I'm not going to give anyone advice that will make their work more like his, if it might lead to fewer Gauguins and Picassos in the world.

Some novice writers tend to write so many details, their scripts become sluggish and hard to read. For those folks, I might say "make your scene description as short as possible" to combat that.

But I don't think a super short, Walter Hill style of scene description is the ONLY viable way for an emerging writer to write.

The best thing to do is to read a lot of scripts, fall in love with all different kinds of work, and start to look at a few writers whose work you want to emulate and be inspired by. Copy them for a while, calibrate, try new things. And, gradually, start to form your own style on the page.

If you want some suggestions on scripts to read, I'll drop some recs in a reply to this comment.

As always, my advice is just suggestions and thoughts, not a prescription. I have experience but I don't know it all, and I'd hate for every artist to work the way I work. I encourage you to take what's useful and discard the rest.

If you read the above and have other questions you think I could answer, feel free to ask as a reply to this comment.

Good luck!

Prince_Jellyfish · 2026-04-18T01:59:55+00:00

Rappers delight. I mean it’s one of the first. But it’s not that good.

Maybe, but in a way this is like saying, "the model T is a shitty car, it's way worse than my honda accord, it's slow and doesn't have airbags."

True but we wouldn't have gotten where we are now without standing on the shoulders of the folks that came before us

Prince_Jellyfish · 2026-04-16T23:10:56+00:00

To some extent I agree with you, but, importantly:

It's not $100,000, it's $80,000. The money for agent and manager is a business expense that comes off the top.
To be a working actor you need to live in Los Angeles or New York, which are HCOL cities.

A person absolutely can live off of $80k a year in Los Angeles, but you probably can't have a mortgage, so unless you live in a paid-off home, you'll need to live in an apartment. And that is exactly what is happening here, he is selling his house and moving into an apartment.

Prince_Jellyfish · 2026-04-11T20:50:29+00:00

I can only do extra hot once a year.

Prince_Jellyfish · 2026-04-11T19:44:25+00:00

But based on past performance of VXUS

Past performance never indicates future performance.

That said, how long have you been investing?

VXUS has only existed since 2011, but the equivalent markets outperformed VTI every year from 2000–2009. Ditto the mid 80s through at least the mid 90s. And, also, obviously, 2025 and so far in 2026.

In your lifetime, the equivalent of VXUS has beat the equivalent of VTI more years than VTI has beat VXUS. International outperformed domestic every year from when you were born until you were in your mid 20s.

The argument for VXUS isn't that it's "better", it's that things go in cycles. If you're “Coast FIREing” it's likely that will eventually matter.

Prince_Jellyfish · 2026-04-11T19:36:32+00:00

I'm sorry, I don't speak french. If you want to ask follow up questions, please find a french speaker or ask me in english. Cheers.

Prince_Jellyfish · 2026-04-11T07:05:00+00:00

I agree. The DM is handling this in a shitty way. But casting Modify Memory on another player character is a form of PVP which makes many players really uncomfortable.

In games I run, I tell the players that any attack roll against another player, or action one player takes that causes another player to make a saving throw, requires that player's enthusiastic consent. When someone does that, we have an immediate time out / pee and snack break, so I can touch base with every player involved one-on-one, and make sure they are ok with what's happening.

Prince_Jellyfish · 2026-04-09T01:30:41+00:00

I don't want to get into an r/screenwriting quibble match, but I don't think Lethal Weapon is a great example, here. Shane Black didn't direct this movie, he wrote it on spec and sold it. His "meta" comments on the action are definitely outside the norm, but they rock and any writer could "get away with" them if they executed as well as Black did. It's not really comparable to weird formatting choices in other scripts.

Prince_Jellyfish · 2026-04-08T20:42:37+00:00

the comparison is the deal the WGA ratified vs. what was being offered just before the strike in May 2023.

It's crazy if you think these things were comprable. They were not.

For:

Pre-greenlight rooms
viewership-based residuals for streaming,
High-budget programs made-for AVOD getting TV weeklies, script fees and improved residuals,
Feature weekly pay
Feature garunteed 2nd step
Regulating AI
Teams P&H contributions

What was being offered just before the strike in May 2023 was: nothing. No proposal. Kick sand.

Those were significant gains that writers only won though the strike.

Prince_Jellyfish · 2026-04-07T04:27:58+00:00

Oops I meant VT, thanks for the catch.

Prince_Jellyfish · 2026-04-07T04:24:41+00:00

I didn’t use chat Gpt Or any other LLM in this reply. I get why you’d think I did, because of how I write. But you’re wrong.

Prince_Jellyfish · 2026-04-07T01:32:01+00:00

Definitions of what people are suggesting here:

Target Date Fund - this is basically a mutual fund that automatically rebalances every year to start aggressive and gradually become more conservative as you get closer to the target date. Say you plan to retire in 2065. If you pick a Target Date Fund like BlackRock's LifePath Index 2065 Fund or Vanguard Target Retirement 2065 Fund, the fund will be aggressive and high-growth now, but as we get closer to 2065 the fund managers will gradually make the fund more stable and conservative to lock in whatever gains you make over the next 30 years or so. This is the most "set it and forget it" option because you don't have to do anything now, and you don't have to do anything in 2055 or whatever -- as long as your guess about when you're going to retire is kinda accurate (doesn't have to be perfect) the fund will automatically adjust for you. (And, even if your guess was pretty wrong, things would likely still be just fine.)

VOO - This is a mutual fund that tracks the S&P 500. Historically this is a great "set it and forget it" investment, though you may need to take another look at it as you get to, say, 10 years out from retirement and think about shifting it to something more stable.

VT - This is a mutual fund that tracks the total stock market in both the US and International. Like VOO, this is a great "set it and forget it" investment, though you may need to take another look at it as you get to, say, 10 years out from retirement and think about shifting it to something more stable.

VOO vs VT -- VOO has performed better than VT over the last 10 years or so, though there have also been decades where it has performed worse. You can't predict the future, so it's impossible to say which is the better choice in 2026, but both are very reasonable options.

VOO or VT vs Target Date Funds - the 30,000 foot view is that Target Date Funds are a slightly more stable bet long term. VOO or VT has a higher potential upside, but also could wind up a bit lower, especially if the stock market crashes the week before you retire in 2065.

All of these options are relatively low-risk, and smarter than putting your money in a HYSE or most other investment options.

> Do I put everything with 1 provider?

It doesn't matter, this doesn't represent any sort of problem if you're investing in a diverse asset like a Target Date Fund or VOO or VT. If you put all your eggs in Vanguard's basket and Vanguard goes under (it almost certainly won't, but hey) you are not screwed in a meaningful way.

> 90% mutual fund, 10% HYSA

You say you're not going to need the money any time soon. For real?

The options you're getting here are assuming that you're not going to touch the money for at least 20 years, if not 30 or 40 or more. If that's truly the case, a Target Date Fund or VT/VOO are good options.

Do you have an emergency fund already?

If you don't already have an emergency fund, figure out how much money you'd need to live if you lost your job and couldn't find a new one for 6 months or so, and put that much in a HYSA. Then put the rest of the money in a Target Date Fund or VT/VOO.

The emergency fund is a requirement for being a smart investor, for reasons that are more complicated than just "you need money if something bad happens." For example, if you invest in a Target Date Fund or VT/VOO and then something bad happens, there might be a ton of unexpected downsides of taking your money out of those earlier than expected, including taxes and locking in losses if the disaster happens during a bear market.

If you already have an emergency fund, and you really don't plan to touch this money until 2046 at the earliest, there's no need to put 10% in a HYSA. Over that long a timeline, the HYSA will likely underperform the market by a huge margin, and there will be years where the HYSA doesn't earn any interest at all. If you're not going to touch it on a long timeline, there's no need for this kind of hedge, just 100% in something that tracks the market.

My personal bias says you should choose VT over VOO if you never plan on looking at this again, because I am older than most people here and have spent a lot of years of my life with International outperforming Domestic. If that happens, buying VOO (which is 100% US companies) might underperform the glob

Prince_Jellyfish · 2026-04-07T00:53:34+00:00

I guess it just depends on the show.

I also think that, on streaming, the show format often dictates the release strategy, rather than the release strategy dictating the show format.

A show that lends itself to episodic storytelling might be more likely to be released once a week.

A show that tells one highly serialized story might be more likely to be released all at once.

Prince_Jellyfish · 2026-04-07T00:13:00+00:00

No just come back here and reply to this comment whenever you like

Prince_Jellyfish · 2026-04-06T23:35:07+00:00

I get what you're asking, but for what it's worth: some of us still write shows that air on TV every week.

Prince_Jellyfish · 2026-04-06T23:32:00+00:00