Spike Scarberry

What happens if you protect your characters from anything bad that could ever happen to them?

Emotion is what makes stories memorable. It's the special sauce that makes viewers come back again and again.

He has a style all his own, one that captivates and entertains readers all across the world. No one else writes like he does ...

... if you've got an idea that you want to tackle but it feels like it's just "too insane" to pull off ... you might want to rethink that.

I’m willing to bet that if all of you made your heroes more like Forrest Gump, your scripts would be much better for it.

So many of you seem to be making the exact same mistakes with your writing. And from my vantage point, they're all easily fixable.

I learned something that day. Genuinely. And it's a lesson I want you all to apply to your writing, too.

... and dammit if I wasn't completely blown away. By the time I turned the final page, I'd quasi fallen in love with the freaking thing.‌

Think like a salesman ... if you have a product you need to sell, which would you rather have? More potential buyers? Or fewer?

Stop focusing on all the things you haven't done, and start focusing on the things you have.

The point is—you will never find anything where everyone agrees. It's literally impossible. And Hollywood is no different.

That’s what “write what you know” really means. It means you should take a feeling, or a unique experience you’ve lived through—something that is quintessentially you—and put it on the page.

Every single script I recommended my bosses read officially had my stamp of approval on it. And how bad do you think it would make me look if I wasted some of their precious time with a mediocre piece of material?

Everything that follows is what they actually said, whether you like it or not.

I was a Hollywood assistant for almost ten years ... let’s go ahead and get the basic stuff out of the way.