Thank you to my readers who emailed, asking if I was alright. I’m fine. I’ve just returned from Los Angeles and will be back to blogging regularly.
Stay tuned for new features coming to the blog. I’ve enlisted a couple of writer friends to help me create some tools that I feel are essential to the screenwriter:
1. A Genre-Based Movie Database
Okay, I’m poor, so this will be just a nicely compiled list of movies. But, every time I start a new project, I feel I reinvent the wheel when searching out benchmark films within the genre. Say you want to write an international thriller with a strong conspiracy theory element that involves a strong male-female lead pairing? Or a romantic comedy with a buddies-to-lovers plotting involving a dog? This database will reference the essential components of the movies so you can find projects that most closely match your own story for study purposes.
2. Beat Sheets
I’ll offer beat sheets relevant to each genre category. This is important not only so you can study how they’re done but also so you don’t have to do them all yourself. We’re all working hard. We might as well share. In this regard, I will likely start out with the beat sheets from the teaching canon of films – Big, The Fugitive, etc.
Again, thank you to all my readers all around the globe! Please let me know what questions you have that can be helpful to you at this point in your craft.
YES! This is something that has needed to be done and I will def. be contributing what i can. I can’t say going through each film I need to go through isn’t rewarding/educational in itself, but… if I could weed out the ones I don’t need… WHAT A TIME SAVER! Great idea. Once its up, we gotta spread the word!
Thanks, Matt. I came up with the genre and beat sheet database idea because everytime I embark on a new project, I feel like I reinvent the wheel. It would be awesome to have things categorized in a writer-friendly way that is easy to draw from. We’re working on the genre database – which should start coming within the next month or so – and then I’ll post beat sheets as we go.