Does anyone you ever get emotional while you’re writing? Like, actually cry? I’ve noticed it happens to me most when I’m really visualizing a scene as a director—almost like I’m watching the finished movie in my head. It’s not even necessarily because the scene is sad. Sometimes it’s just because it suddenly feels real, like I’m witnessing it instead of inventing it. I’m curious if anyone else experiences this, or if your process is completely different. What does it feel like for you when you know you’re really “inside” a scene? The attached image is part of my conversation with my ChatGPT lol.

Link: Thursday, July 2nd, 10 a.m. Pacific Time! This is where everyone starts! These newcomer calls are always fun and pack with regular members who show up to read pages and welcome the new folks to the cult... I mean, group. We have pages on deck from @Brijit Reed and @Marion Mills. If anyone else has pages or just wants to come see how things work around here, by all means check in below or just show up tomorrow and we'll be glad to welcome you on board and hear about bit about your journey as a writer and what lead you here. See you folks mañana! Dave

🔊🔊🔊 Update - the Dark Drafts Discord server has been created! You can join here: https://discord.gg/79GKZ8RT3 Hey friends, interested in syncing up with a few horror/thriller/sci-fi people (can expand, I love everything) to sync up in a small writers group where we read each others stuff and like a 1/week check in. Would be awesome to get a lil feedback group going before table reads etc. @David Stem or Mods pls feel free to delete if not the place for this. But would be awesome to have a partner or few to just get feedback before shipping to @Chad Desrochers for table reads.

Great characters drive every scene they are in. Even when nothing is happening. Writers come to me with the same complaint. The script isn't working. The story feels flat. Audiences aren't connecting. They want to talk about plot — structure, act breaks, whether the midpoint is landing. Here's what I've learned in 25 years fixing broken scripts: the plot is almost never the problem. The character is. The character isn't driving the story. The story is driving the character. They're being pushed from scene to scene by whatever the writer needs them to do next. They don't have a wound. They don't have a specific, consistent way of seeing the world that colors everything they do. They're a sock puppet. And the audience feels it — even if they can't name it. Here's what interesting actually looks like: a character whose internal wound causes them to exert control in every scene — even when the scene is about ordering toast. Jack Nicholson's character is the epitome of this in this classic dinner scene from Five Easy Pieces. Watch it for a masterclass in character. There's no plot in the Five Easy Pieces diner scene. The want is as minimal as it gets. A man wants a piece of toast. But how he responds to being told no tells you everything about how he sees the world and his place in it. Jack doesn't win. He gets thrown out. He never gets the toast. But he never stops being exactly, specifically, unmistakably himself for a single second. That's a character. Not a plot device. SAME SCENE. THREE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PEOPLE. Watch what happens when you put three fully-formed characters in the same diner, facing the same waitress, asking for the same toast. 🔴 TONY SOPRANO — The Sopranos Tony is already vibrating when he sits down. Something happened today — a betrayal, an indignity. The toast is not about toast. When the waitress says no, Tony goes quiet. Measuring. Then he SLAMS the table. The whole diner jumps. Carmela stiffens. He equates a diner rule with every indignity his mother ever handed him. He engineers the workaround — orders the chicken salad, tells her to hold the chicken. Gets thrown out anyway. Drops way too much cash. Leans in close: "Next time someone tells you they don't make the rules? They're lyin'." No toast. But everyone in that diner knows exactly who he is. That's the wound made visible.

Thank you so much @David Stem for suggesting this! I had a really fun time working on this and I wrote my late uncle into a character and it was a bonding experience for my whole family. So grateful!