Some writers are exceptionally talented at creating beautiful images with words. They can describe the perfect room, the perfect atmosphere, or the perfect sunset. But after they finish setting the scene, something still has to happen.

I call these writers “table setters.” They arrange everything beautifully, but sometimes forget to serve the meal.

In this video, I discuss the difference between setting a scene and actually moving a story forward, why screenwriting requires even more narrative movement than novel writing, and one simple question you can ask after every scene:

What has changed?

If nothing has changed narratively, you may have set the table without serving the story.

Find me at: StoryRay.com

Your character isn’t just moving through a plot. They’re moving through an inner journey too.

In this video, I explore a simple three-phase framework for thinking about a character’s spiritual development:

Spiritual youth: realizing that life is but a dream.
Spiritual adolescence: realizing that it isn’t just your dream, but an interconnected dream where what we do affects others.
Spiritual maturity: realizing that eventually, all dreams must end.

The point isn’t that every character has to pass through all three phases. Knowing where your character is can help reveal the themes already buried inside your story and help you build external conflicts that actually challenge what’s happening inside them.

And to see how it works, I apply the framework to one of the simplest stories almost everybody knows: Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Then I take Goldilocks a little further than the original fairy tale ever did.

Because sometimes the question isn’t just what happens to your character?

It’s what are they spiritually ready to understand when it happens?

Find me at: StoryRay.com

Everybody has an ego, screenwriters included.But I believe there’s an important difference between an ego that is anchored to the work, the money, or some tangible consequence, and an ego that is anchored primarily to opinion.In this video, I continue my conversation about script-reader's outsized egos and look at another powerful gatekeeper in modern screenwriting: the manager.I talk about how representation changed around the late 1990s and early 2000s, how managers became an unofficial necessary step between writers and the industry, and how the old process of paid development increasingly gave way to writers doing rounds of speculative rewrites before anyone actually buys the script.Writers have egos. Producers have egos. Everyone involved in filmmaking has an ego.My argument is simple: if you’re going to have influence over the creative process, your ego should be anchored to something besides your opinion.

You can find me at: StoryRay.com