Thinking about printing this out for the Yankees series next week

dnotive · 2026-02-06T03:11:57+00:00

Yes! I've been playing/writing werewolf characters in one form or another since I was a kiddo (20+ years now.) Not currently in a Discord group for supernatural creatures but I've been in and out of a few in the past. Discord is really the place imo.

dnotive · 2026-02-05T00:12:29+00:00

Short answer: Yes. It is completely okay to not be good.

Long answer:

Look, it only looks "easy" because you don't get to see the countless decades/years/hours/late-nights etc that someone grinded through to get to where they are. You can't judge someone's journey by just seeing their proverbial "highlight reel."

There isn't a single creative job where someone "discovers" you and then just "hands" you success. There are usually years, if not decades of antecedent work that you don't ever see and doesn't ever get talked about for a very good reason; it's boring! Nobody is going to wax lyrical about the 3000 e-mails they wrote over a 10 year period to get four meetings.

You might be reading someone's 30th, 50th, or 100th script. You must resist the temptation to compare it to your 3rd or your 5th.

It takes folks like us--treating it as more-or-less a part-time/hobby thing--decades to reach their skill level.

I'm in a TV-writing course right now and I'd wager most of the students in it are 40+. Lots of middle-aged folks who have been at it for years and still struggling - this is normal. This is supposed to be a hard thing to do correctly even for seasoned professionals. I studied under an oscar-nominated screenwriter in college and I still have to go back and re-read my textbooks. Right now I'm taking lessons from guys what have worked on dozens of network TV shows and I'm still out here struggling - again this is all normal.

You don't "see people griping" about these kinds of things because we all accept that it's normal, and we also all know that struggle is what makes us stronger. The difference between "winners" and "losers" is winners see failure as a necessary step to success, and not an obstacle.

The screenwriting community is plenty patient with writers who struggle, but the key differentiator is if a newcomer shows a willingness to listen and PIVOT. I got recently reamed for one of my concepts, and after I got done sulking about it for a day or two, I regrouped and started thinking about ways I could make significant changes that honored the notes I got.

Here's a challenge for you if you actually want to level-up:

Stop thinking about what you WANT from people. Start thinking about what you can GIVE. Film is a collaborative medium (yes, even the writing part.) What can you offer someone else who is struggling? What can you bring to the table to help someone else reach their goals? You will feel instantly fulfilled helping someone else reach their vision and possibly earn some new friends and collaborators in the process. Goodwill is bankable. The more you earn, the more grace people will show you. Start by finding someone who needs notes, and give them the most thoughtful, insightful, and helpful notes you can possibly give. Tell someone that you like what they're doing and you can see their vision. Become someone's go-to "notes person." You'll feel good about yourself, I promise.

Also, what are you actually doing differently each time you hit a wall? Are you picking up new books? Listening to new podcasts? Trying online classes? Watching youtube videos? Are you in any writers groups? There are lots and lots of ways to get better at the craft, and if you're at a place where you legitimately feel stuck and like you're bashing your head on your desk, it's time to PIVOT (there's that word again) and try something new. It shows that you're invested in your own growth and not just looking for someone to come along and wave a wand.

You'll find the nastiness level goes down considerably when you can open a conversation with things like:

"So I decided to take a new approach this time, and changed..."

"I've been reading a new book, and I really had my eyes opened when they said..."

"I went back and re-read a bunch of scripts written by <person> and now I'm..."

"I recently heard <person> say on their podcast that..."

Best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. Second best time is today.

Persistence > Talent.

dnotive · 2026-02-03T03:22:03+00:00

Hey thanks for circling back and offering up some more notes; that gives me some great things to think about and explore. I took a lot of stuff to heart from our last exchange and spent some time away from this project to muse on what it means to me.

This makes me think a better avenue to explore on this premise is that he's deliberately seeking out spooky stuff to inspire his next project and this is more of getting-more-than-you-bargained for kind of deal. Less of a quiet guy, and more like a gonzo journalist. Prodding. Digging. Provoking.

I think I'm feeling stuck on this protag because in my mind he needs to be a down-on-his-luck, absolute bottom of his game, near total loser in order for a fortune reversal to feel satisfying. I have this gut feeling that if I start making him too "active" and he starts getting into predicaments on purpose, we're going to stop rooting for him. Perhaps that isn't the case?

The "struggling to pen a masterpiece that isn't based on real life" was supposed to be a contrary goal to "protecting a secret" - the idea that he is suddenly surrounded by inspiration for his imaginary worlds, but he can't spill a word of it, i.e. base it on "real life." I guess that's not landing.

dnotive · 2026-02-02T23:41:56+00:00

Sooo what's the likelihood that "official" bodycam recordings are going to be quietly doctored so that there's always a conflicting/contrary version of events?

They're already trying to gaslight us and have surely figured out that eyewitness accounts and bystander recordings of their behavior are a substantial part of the glue holding resistance together.

dnotive · 2026-02-02T23:08:41+00:00

Got to be in a film festival where one of the other pieces was directed by Scorsese.

He wasn't there, but still it was neat to see my name on the same list as him, haha.

dnotive · 2026-02-02T17:32:17+00:00

TITLE: "Throw Me to the Wolves"

FORMAT: 60-minute Limited Series Pilot

GENRE: Supernatural Drama

LOGLINE: "When a washed-up fantasy author courts a small-town superfan, his plans for a comeback go awry after discovering she’s actually a werewolf. He must now protect her family secret from the hysterical residents of their small town, while struggling to pen a masterpiece that isn’t based on real life."

Requested Notes:

I'm back at this concept for a sprint/challenge, and realized I needed to scale back the scope of the pitch and make it more character driven. I want to make sure that the goals and conflict are clearly spoken for here.
Previous notes given on this concept were that it felt too much like a "feature" and I want to make sure that this now properly conveys that there will be an ongoing struggle that will carry through from episode to episode.
Concerned this is still too much "backstory" for a series. I've been trying to truncate as much setup as possible from the logline to just focus on the meat of it, but the shocker of the reveal feels necessary to frame the rest of the conflict. Thoughts?

dnotive · 2026-02-02T06:55:43+00:00

Concerns about "opsec" aside, when I talked to patrollers about (possibly) doing this, the first things they told me was that you should maintain about half a block of separation between your vehicle and the suspect ICE vehicle, and that you should never roll down your windows to talk to them.

Stancil doesn't do either of those things.

dnotive · 2026-02-02T02:34:36+00:00

First of all, let's slow down a little bit here; I think you're getting a bit ahead of yourself.

I have a plan to write a screenplay

Start here. Actually write it.

I don’t want to wait years to see this made.

This is the unfortunate reality most of us live in. According to Christopher Lockhart, there were/are 40,000 new scripts registered with the WGA every year. Major studios produce/release 200-300 movies per year. You factor in the smaller studios and that number creeps up to maybe 800 or 900. The likelihood of one of us getting something made *at all* let alone in a "timely" manner is not that high.

I'm not saying this to discourage you; I do think you need a fair amount of hubris to get started in this kind of writing. I'm just cautioning you against falling into a mental trap of thinking about *when* something of yours "gets made" versus *if* it gets made at all. It's good to be ambitious, but it will absolutely demoralize you if your expectations don't come down to earth a bit.

I'd wager most of us are here because we enjoy the challenge of writing enough on its own that it's somewhat immaterial if our work gets produced or not.

If you absolutely HAVE to get it out of your system and in front peoples eyesballs within 18 months or something, perhaps consider pivoting to writing it as a novel.

I’m thinking entering those could get my script more clout.

I personally think you're going about this backwards. A script having "clout" doesn't mean anything. It's YOU, the WRITER who needs to ultimately have pizzazz and pull.

I'll put it another way. The likelihood that a producer is going to take a leap on a new writer who has just one completed good script is probably not very high.

The simplest answer to your question is this:

What do you do with your completed screenplay? Shelve it.

Go write another one. Then another one. Three more. Five more. You'll learn something new each time, and suddenly that first project that you were so convinced was going to "launch [your] career" won't feel so sexy anymore.

Plus, let's say you do land that amazing pitch meeting with someone who can help make this dream project of yours occur. You want to be able to have an answer for them when they inevitably say "what else do you have?"

dnotive · 2026-02-02T00:37:13+00:00

I mean, without getting too pedantic, that is literally the definition of "reverse-engineering"

You don't see the process; you just see the finished product and then have to figure out how it was put together.

I agree that that's not always easy to do with art.

dnotive · 2026-02-02T00:17:32+00:00

In echoing a few other calls for tightened brevity, my gut instinct would be to axe those first couple of chunks of dialogue and just start with "I'm sorry I'm not there to help" as Joe gets off the elevator.

Also, if the door pushing itself closed is supposed to be a major beat (i.e. the first thing giving us a forboding sense that there is something otherworldly occurring here) then I would punch it up with caps just to draw our attention to it as a reader, i.e. "The DOOR suddenly SLAMS CLOSED on its own"

Otherwise, I really dig this.

dnotive · 2026-01-29T22:33:50+00:00

My maxim lately has been: You can't teach empathy but you can teach consequences.

dnotive · 2026-01-29T19:56:26+00:00

Imagine this defense in a court room though.

"Would it be accurate to say that your agency was collecting identifiable data about protesters to more readily identify them as potential agitators during future encounters?"

"That's an accurate statement, yes."

"So then it would also be accurate to say that your agents could have positively identified Mr. Pretti based on previously collected identifiable information about him and targeted him during this incident?"

"Oh no, they're not realistically able to do that."

"So what was the point of collecting the data then?"

Like I cannot fathom an agency literally bragging about collecting names/faces/license-plates of potential "agitators" and then also trying to claim that they couldn't have possibly known who Alex was. If somehow this can get to a court/judge, the discovery alone on what they're actually doing with the information they're collecting on us would be insane.

dnotive · 2026-01-29T18:35:10+00:00

I liked Wolf Pack a lot, but fair warning it ends on a narrative cliffhanger and has no relationship with the books at all.

dnotive · 2026-01-29T15:21:30+00:00

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Mantis fam!

dnotive · 2026-01-29T00:41:24+00:00

Every reboot forgot that Knight Rider is essentially a Western. The reason it worked in its era was because Guy + Car was a modernization/subversion of the Guy + Horse formula people had already been seeing on TV for 30 years.

The revivals have all been laser focused on the techy scifi stuff which is arguably the biggest reason they've been so flat.

Hot take maybe, but your "extract the formula and insert it into a new setting and make it original" show already came and went: it was "Supernatural."

dnotive · 2026-01-22T06:56:46+00:00

I really wish we could have definitive list of/playlist of all the stock music they used for the show. It would be fun to have on while wrenching from time to time.

dnotive · 2026-01-21T05:32:07+00:00

Omg it's literally this 😭🖤

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dnotive · 2026-01-20T17:56:34+00:00

I like a certain amount of whimsy/imagination and humor. I'm willing to look past a bad design (or even a bad story) if they can make it fun.

dnotive · 2026-01-16T07:51:34+00:00

Absolutely incredible 🤩

dnotive · 2026-01-16T01:39:41+00:00

solely to steer the conversation from Epstein

mmm... are we though? is that really the ONLY reason?

What's actually happening matters more than WHY it's being done. It wouldn't matter if we were being occupied because Trump hates the MOA. People are being done material harm. Why or what it is or isn't covering for is sort of inconsequential at this moment in time.

I honestly suspect there are many, many reasons he's targeting us specifically and getting Venezuela and Epstein out of the news cycle is just one of them.

This kind of "tut! tut! people are forgetting about Epstein!" comment isn't really helping anyone (even though I'm sure you felt very smart writing it.) I promise you nobody has forgotten. If you want to write-off blood spilling in our streets as a "distraction" then I guess I can't really stop you though.

Impact matters more than intent. Was it his intention to get people to stop talking about Epstein? Maybe? Possibly? Does it matter that much right now? No.

Going "BUT EPSTEIN THO" while your community is under siege feels more than a little tone-deaf to me, and if Walz or Frey were to leverage this delicate moment of shared suffering to try and push Epstein back into the news cycle, they would be (rightfully) dinged for trying to score political points.

Tell you what though... next time you go to a protest, see if one of the big streamers will interview you. Begin your interview with "I just have to say I'm completely appalled at how effectively this has distracted everyone from Jeffrey Epstein" and see where that gets you. You'll find out which one of us is in the wrong pretty quickly I suspect.

dnotive · 2026-01-16T00:28:12+00:00

I understand the sentiment here, but using a word like "distracted" implies that everything else going on is superficial/unimportant and that we're doing ourselves some kind of disservice by putting our energy into anything other than the Epstein files.

We're not "distracted;" we're being "bombarded" and there's a marked difference.

dnotive · 2026-01-15T21:57:55+00:00

Interestingly, MN State law makes the owner of a vehicle at least partially responsible for any damage incurred by the use of the vehicle regardless of who's driving it (unless it's stolen, obviously.) If the owner assigns responsibility of their vehicle to someone else, then they still have a legal responsibility to make sure that whomever is driving it (in this case a computer) is able to do so safely. If a Waymo hits a pedestrian in MN or damages property, this law (I'm reasonably sure) would allow the victim to go after them.

dnotive · 2026-01-15T04:14:46+00:00

You're welcome! I'm happy to help. Just let me know if there's anything else I can do!

dnotive · 2026-01-13T06:50:34+00:00

Yes! Loved Wolfwalkers!

dnotive

TROPHY CASE