FrankenScript :: Lee Gabel's Screenwriting Journal/Blog

I don’t think there’s a writer out there that doesn’t find it a struggle most of the time. At least that’s what I like to think. I ran across a recent article in Wired about Dan Harmon and his show Community (although to be fair, “recent” is a pretty loose term with me since I [...]

Last Thursday I was feeling pretty good about an outline I was developing, then Friday rolled around and I discovered that I was in deeper shit than I realized. I made the classic rookie mistake. I didn’t know my story. I thought I did, and kept trying to tell myself I did, but deep down, [...]

I follow a bunch of people on Twitter. Some are prolific, and some are not. I was wondering today how much time is spent tweeting, so I did a little math. It’s actually quite startling. According to the Wikipedia entry for “words per minute (wpm)“, for the “purposes of measurement a word is standardized to [...]

Today I begin a new script. I’ve written horror and drama genre scripts successfully so far, so this time I’m going to attempt a comedy. I have heard that the comedy genre is one of most difficult film genres to do well and that scares the shit out of me. Am I funny? Will others [...]

Ran across this interview with Paul Haggis today from “The Dialogue”. Some sage advice on writing, rewriting and creation of story.

I was recently asked to expand on what visual effects I am involved with and how they relate to my screenwriting work. Visual effects is a huge encompassing term, and covers so many things, but always involves computers, as opposed to special effects, which are physical (like explosions, miniatures, etc.) I’ve done a little bit [...]