# Style & Substance

So much of what you adore when you read or watch is the result of an author, screenwriter, actor, director, stepping out onto a limb and offering you more.

Clearly there is a knowledge gap out there … there’s something that a hell of a lot of writers out there need to know, and they don’t know it right now.

But for our other mediums we must travel to what some cynics describe as the least truthful place of all—Hollywood.

If cultural connection, curiosity, and interrogation is some bedrock to our interest in, and fondness for the genre, what else draws audiences so endlessly to these films?

If a writer is going to present his POV in those big, neon letters, becoming almost strident in his or her moral clarity, then one should hope to be as clever as Sorkin.

Let women be women, let mothers be badass. Let us fight! You won’t be disappointed.

It’s almost like I’ve got a blank page on which to write this new entity from scratch. Similar to creating a character for a screenplay.

It's more valuable that you know how people answer their own questions without your input, since you won't always be in the room when audiences experience your work.

Unless you’re writing only for you, you need to keep the audience in mind. Especially if that audience is the gatekeeper to all your hopes and dreams.

When Spike Scarberry threw down the gauntlet, insisting structure was more important than voice, Karin Partin Wells raised her hand to battle in a public debate.

This is so important to writing good dialogue that it deserves to be on a card on your bulletin board … or at least in caps on its own line.

It’s a bumpy journey, full of twists and turns that you won’t see coming, but the last thing you should do is stop.

It’s as if people sometimes don’t have any idea what they’re doing, and yet they firmly believe that they do.

By sanding off the edges, these new versions wholly sacrificed most of the fun and audacity that made the originals so popular in the first place.

Does the benefit of moving the cathartic moment up, hooking the audience, outweigh the emotion that will come if you steel your nerves and wait?