Tips For Writers

People aren’t interested in stories in which the characters begin and end at the same place.

Tips For Writers

KNOW YOUR MARKET: what we're looking for, right now, and what we're not looking for.

Tips For Writers

The Query Letter: Don't try to sell us. Try to give us what we're looking for.

TIPS FOR SCREENWRITERS

The audience does not want the Hero to be lucky, unless the luck is caused by the hero's cunning or provident preparation.

TIPS FOR WRITERS

Take charge of your own thinking; visualize your success so that you can experience it in your outer life.

TIPS FOR WRITERS

Take responsibility. Most successful people have struggled long and hard, and endured through multiple failures before achieving their success.

TIPS FOR SCREENWRITERS

The audience wants the Hero to escape death (literal or figurative) by means of strength of character, persistence, cleverness and courage, not raw strength.

TIPS FOR WRITERS

Make whatever adjustments are necessary to reduce or eliminate your contact with the naysayers.

TIPS FOR WRITERS

Never sit down to write until you know what you're going to write before you sit down.

Tips For Writers

Associate with positive people, and stop associating with negative people.

TIPS FOR THE SCREENWRITER

The two important reasons for writing a treatment are to sell and to diagnose your story.

TIPS FOR WRITERS

The writing flourishes when you face your fear, owning it as yours.

TIPS FOR SCREENWRITERS

The audience wants to believe that the Hero can win. They don't want to be sure that the Hero will win.

Fourteen Reasons for Rejections by GENE FEHLER

"The suggestions made for revisions will often make the difference between acceptance and rejection..."

  • You really don't want to write; you just want to be published.
  • You haven't read widely the kind of material you are trying to write.
  • You haven't mastered writing techniques.
  • You've been too easily discouraged.
  • You haven't studied the market.
  • You failed to follow up leads.
  • You can't take criticism.
  • Your writing is commonplace or lacks imaginative spark.
  • Your query letters don't "sell" your idea.
  • You don't revise before submitting your manuscript.
  • You are too concerned with writing for a specific market.
  • You haven't learned the editorial requirements of a specific market.
  • You make excuses for not writing.

TIPS FOR SCREENWRITERS

Moviegoers want the Hero to be forced to undertake frightening and difficult tasks which they would not willingly undertake themselves.

TIPS FOR WRITERS

You should collaborate only with someone who's better than you, never someone who's worse than you or who's at the same level as you.

TIP FOR SCREENWRITERS

Moviegoers want the Hero to play for high stakes, some outcome, or ideal, or benefit that they believe is supremely important.