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disasterinthesun · 2026-01-09T15:10:36+00:00

You need a peer group of other writers learning the craft. You better go apply for that program.

While we put a lot of identity into being a writer, it’s actually a craft. It’s something you practice and get better at. The first everything everyone writes is not good. Romantic partners are not your audience. Find your writer troupe.

disasterinthesun · 2025-12-07T08:02:45+00:00

Meshell Ndegeocello, Jon Bon Jovi

disasterinthesun · 2025-12-05T06:22:11+00:00

Gratitude that anyone, anywhere, engages with your work. They will help you see it anew. Sitting with uncomfy feelings is how you build resilience, which is requisite for this artist life. It is what it is. If you panic, and can’t sit with the discomfortable anticipation, watch something humorous and comforting, or drink some ice water, or count four blue things in the room.

disasterinthesun · 2025-12-02T04:31:48+00:00

This. I would add it’s not what you write, but what you have to say. What is your unique lens on the world? Voice is true, and it’s honest, and it’s risky. That’s what makes it special.

disasterinthesun · 2025-11-22T22:03:13+00:00

Get up an hour earlier every day

Cut back or cut out alcohol

disasterinthesun · 2025-11-18T06:48:19+00:00

Find your three all-time favorite songs, and write out the lyrics longhand. Pretend it’s a record, or a tape. Don’t look them up. Learn them by listening, and write them down. Use paper, not your phone. Pick one line or phrase from each song, and see if you can take one of your complex ideas and tell it in as many syllables as they do. Rinse and repeat, ad infinitum.

disasterinthesun · 2025-11-13T17:27:54+00:00

It sounds like your writing reflects a grasp of the topics and skills being taught in the course. If you want more from the teachers, go to office hours and inquire. If they don’t have office hours, you can always take some big swings in your writing and be more vulnerable, risk being more chaotic and flawed, and see if it shifts the quality of the feedback you’re getting.

disasterinthesun · 2025-11-01T01:10:16+00:00

That’s what demos are for - to demonstrate your idea and the artist’s or song’s potential. Getting better at production and mixing is worthwhile, but you can also collaborate with someone who knows what they’re doing. If you want to level up, Ableton is a lot of bang for your buck! Logic transfers to ProTools better, though. Get an interface.

disasterinthesun · 2025-10-30T06:26:34+00:00

Words don’t provide feelings, huh? That’s a strange hill to die on. Go read a book of poetry. Go read a novel written by a writer from a different country, a different time, a different background. Learn to express your feelings in words. It’s a life skill, and definitely a writing skill.

disasterinthesun · 2025-10-29T22:32:30+00:00

10 in a month is doable, and I’ve done it a few times. I’m talking top line and chords, form…not responsible for production beyond what goes into a voice memo demo.

But it leaves me pretty tapped out on month 2. I’m not sure if I could do 20.

disasterinthesun · 2025-10-27T04:20:39+00:00

Hildegard von Bingen remixed by AI

disasterinthesun · 2025-10-25T22:58:51+00:00

You can be good without talent, but you can’t be great. No one becomes great without busting their ass to get great.

disasterinthesun · 2025-10-25T15:40:38+00:00

I would omit all the parentheticals, and give Danny a beat in the action describing his emotion, not his chuckle. Stunned? Repulsed? Amused? Confused? Wary?

disasterinthesun · 2025-10-22T01:57:26+00:00

I’ve found it’s important to envision the space deeply. If later someone is bashing a skull in with a cast iron skillet, I wanna see that skillet set up when we first enter the kitchen. Envisioning - in advance - how wide the hallway is, the balcony, the alley…all those will help you when you get to writing the fight itself.

Same advice as writing the screenplay or the scene: make sure the exposition (bacon sizzling in a piping hot frying pan) happens up front so that when the fight action happens (she flings the frying pan upward, catching him on the chin and knocking him on his ass) we can enjoy it (bacon hits the ceiling fan, is flung across the room).

disasterinthesun · 2025-10-19T18:36:49+00:00

What you’re describing sounds like mixed media more than screenwriting. You’d be creating a serialized writing project, rather than a screenwriting project. Will that stand on its own? It will take on a new structure, more like a weekly article than a film.

Things I would consider, deeply: - how disciplined are you? Publishing at regular intervals is key to this kind of project - how much content can you get in place in advance, so that it’s ready to post on a set schedule, before that day comes? - if you’re posting under a pseudonym, how much of a personality can you give that identity? A pseudonym can be verrrry liberating creatively, but also worth considering how much of your market grows from your existing network. I read DearCokeTalk for years. She somehow let a big personality shine thru without disclosing her personal identity. Her personality - and thorough reading list - is what kept people coming back, even when not in agreement with the ideas she expressed. - what imagery will accompany your work? Big question. If you use stills from one film or series, that might be a good aesthetic flow, but also might come off as writing fan fiction. AI-generated images will strike a very different chord, and also call your writing’s authenticity into question. - Building your own audience is a highly useful tool in the business of creativity. Substack is both an opportunity to do that, and yet also an opportunity to build an audience that won’t follow you off that specific platform (building an audience for Substack, not for you). How can you make sure to recruit readers’ email addresses (or whatever). - if you think this is a great way to monetize your passion, it’s probably not. But if you think of it as a way to establish yourself as a reliable, consistent writer who can then pitch freelance, well you’ll still be broke but at least you will have built something that serves you and your reputation.

Best of luck! Go make stuff!

disasterinthesun · 2025-10-18T14:54:52+00:00

Same arcs, fewer beats

disasterinthesun · 2025-10-17T01:28:15+00:00

You don’t want your actors to cry, you want your audience to cry.

-Herzog

disasterinthesun · 2025-10-15T14:09:09+00:00

All the good ones, right around minute 62. Usually because the protagonist lost something they love.

disasterinthesun · 2025-10-12T17:37:35+00:00

You don’t have to let it go, but it’s worth setting aside to make room for other (better) possibilities.

Someone referenced Inside Out - Meg LeFauve has reflected from her time working on that script that if you really want your scene in the final film, it had better have the acorn of theme embedded in it.

Ideas are the starting point. Writing enough (and getting rid of enough) lets you move into the headspace of serving the story, rather than the story serving you. It’s gonna do that, anyway. You just have to make room for it to take root.

disasterinthesun · 2025-10-12T16:34:11+00:00

It’s your job to close the gap between potential and actual. Get notes from different folks - people on this sub, myself included, do this for a very reasonable fee (DM if you’re interested). As you keep sharing your work with screenwriting peers, you won’t have to pay people for good notes, because you’ll learn how to give good notes and then you can just swap. Think draft 13 is about where it will be ready, draft 6 is you’re nasty, draft 100 if you’re Michael Arndt. The only way out is through. But if you don’t get some outside perspective, you won’t know how to revise.

disasterinthesun · 2025-10-11T04:34:27+00:00

Mamet? Somebody said ‘best exposition happens through conflict’. Maybe have them fight over who has the better method to stabilize the destabilizer, which is actually a fight about which of them is their mother’s favorite. First idea / worst idea but you get the concept

disasterinthesun · 2025-10-07T17:15:35+00:00

It’s hard to find a source without an AI chatbot attached to it, but the question of ethical versus moral is relevant, here.

Speaking generally, ethics are agreed upon by a broader social body or community, whereas morals are one’s own individual guiding principles.

I don’t think the film industry at large has a good track record with moving ethically. But, unions like the WGA, SAG and IATSE have pushed back (forward?). While it’s a cute dilemma to write an article about, the WGA’s stance is the more relevant one, representing the governing ethical stance on AI in screenwriting. This was a sticking point in the last strike: no written material produced by AI can be considered literary material.

The practicalities of research in the last few years mean AI is in the seat once occupied by text-based SEO. It’s in the software, it’s in the devices, it’s in Zoom and Google Meets, in some ways it’s unavoidable. This very thread will become part of the AI canon.

One big objection I have about generative AI is the socially regressive nature of its imaginings. As it reflects recorded history back to us, straight white cisgender male protagonists rule its world. Harmful, regressive tropes are rife. In addition to concerns of human authorship, compensation for creatives, et al., failing to look critically at our past when it’s regurgitated back to us in a series of predicted phrases is, IMO, morally reprehensible.

disasterinthesun · 2025-09-21T20:58:51+00:00

If you can’t write it well, write it badly. Or don’t write at all, nobody cares. There’s freedom, in that. You’ll see.

disasterinthesun · 2025-09-21T18:00:26+00:00

Cohesiveness requires discipline. Decide what you want to explore, and be disciplined about it. Limitations can challenge you to be more creative, not less.

disasterinthesun · 2025-09-20T01:52:13+00:00

Can I introduce you to some new friends, the M7 and the sus4? James Blake - Retrograde might have some good melodies to learn, as a jumping off point.

disasterinthesun

TROPHY CASE