I know I'm not alone in writing the easiest, loudest emotional beat in the toolkit: the dead wife. Or the murdered girlfriend. Or the kidnapped daughter.

These ideas are simple and easy, that's why we do them. But if you want your script to stand out, it's time to stop putting women in refrigerators and to get more original.

It feels like "stakes," right? Wrong. It’s actually just a trip to…

If everyone has a story to tell, then every character in those stories needs to be made up of stories of their own, so the tale comes across as real and engaging.

The more detail you give your character, the more the audience can identify with them and the easier it'll be for your project to find its way to the big or small screen.

To get your characters in shape, I recommend writing a…

One of my favorite movies of all time is the revisionist Western _Unforgiven_. It was directed by Clint Eastwood and takes us into the world of the Wild West in ways that felt revolutionary when it came out.

But aside from the grittiness and violence, and the realism on display, I actually think there's a goofy small thing that makes the movie one of the greatest of all time.

It's the fact…