On The Rugrats Movie there was a Russian director named Igor. His English wasn't great. He'd read our latest draft, find me and my writing partner in the hallway, and deliver the same review every time. Imagine this in thick Russian accent: "I read script. Script needs... something." That was it. He never said what the something was. It pissed me off. It felt unfair. But he was absolutely right. It did need something. And he wasn't a writer, so pointing to it wasn't his job. Finding it was ours. The same way it's an actor's job to bring a character to life, or an art director's job to bring a set to life. Your job as a writer is to find the something. // I used to think the something was plot. Things happen, and characters happen to be standing in them. So I'd rearrange events, punch up scenes, and Igor would find me in the hallway again. Script needs something. After a long series of beating my head against the wall, I found it. The something is what your character is hiding. Or is in deep denial of. // Rugrats turned around when we leaned into Tommy's denial. Suddenly there was comic juxtaposition between the scene Tommy insisted was happening and the scene his friends could plainly see. Same engine in Shrek. Shrek at dinner with Fiona's parents is funny because he's in denial about how obviously they hate him. But look closer. The King is in denial too. He's hiding that he was the frog a princess kissed. He believes that part of him is unlovable. Rewatch the movie and you'll see it: everything that happens in that kingdom happens not because the father hates Shrek, but because he hates the frog in himself. All of us hide parts of ourselves from the world. Including from the people closest to us. So when a character on screen does it, we don't watch them. We recognize ourselves. // Here's the truth nobody tells you. The audience doesn't care about you. They don't care about your story. They don't even care about your characters. They care about themselves. That's why they bought the ticket.

That's the story in today's Premium Coaching session. Shauna's decided find a director will be harder than becoming one. So she went and shot a short to prove she can helm her own damn script. Five minutes. Dark horror. Based on something real that happened to her when she was an artist in residence at a high school, trapped by a skinhead in a cave. She shot it in a church with no permits, in twelve hours. Her producer quit on Saturday before a Wednesday shoot over a contingency fee. She didn't quit, but hung in there and found a replacement at the last minute, and he absolutely delivered. People tell you no. People quit. You don't. That's the whole game. Congrats @Shauna G for getting it done! The pages: @Elliot Moss brought the opening of Vanlyfe. Finn and Sunny, two people living in a broken van they call the spaceship. Beautiful world, funny as hell, but the room pushed on the same thing: make us feel the relationship before we watch the crime. The crux underneath it is the small life. Sunny is stuck and calls it survival. Finn is a crust-fund kid who can always go home, so his freedom is a choice he's pretending is a trap. Then we got into Act 2 of @Michael Booth's romantic horror. Byron absorbs ghosts and has spent his life running from it. The wound is right there and it's brutal: as a kid he was taken from his mother because of what he could do. So the lie became simple. If I ignore this, I'm safe. The small life is avoidance, isolation, a marriage that died because he was never in the room. The room's note was to make the flashbacks earn their place by triggering them, and to let his avoidance be the choice that drives him, not just the thing happening to him. Wound. Lie. Small life. Every strong script in the room was sitting on all three, whether the writer named them or not. That's the work. You find the wound, you name the lie the character built to survive it, and you show us the small life that lie trapped them in. Then you break it.

I am so excited to share the news with you all! The results are in on my entry to the Oxford Script Awards Best US Screenplay, and I am a FINALIST! I am incredibly grateful to @David Stem and everyone in the Writer's Forge for your insights and support! I have been carrying this story in my bones for decades, and it wasn't until finding this community in mid-March that I shifted from a memoir to a screenplay, and wow, I am so glad I am here! There weren't any other teenage girl Assistant Athletic Trainers for a Men's Rugby Team in California or Europe in the 1970s or early 1980s that I ever saw or heard of, so it's a very unique story to be told, and it could only happen here in the Writer's Forge! I researched Film Festivals that were in countries where rugby is very familiar, knowing my story might be seen as surprising, coming from California, a woman, and a member of an Elite San Francisco club from the 1960s to 1980s. We have a long history of traveling overseas to play top competition unavailable in the U.S., and they once played a match in Oxford, a well-established rugby community. So I am beyond proud of this achievement! From Film Freeway: The Oxford Script Awards is an IMDb-qualifying competition built for one purpose: getting your script into the hands of UK industry professionals looking for the next indie talent. Ranked as a Top 15 Most Popular Screenwriting Festival in the UK and Top 100 Best Reviewed globally, we provide the ultimate professional platform for emerging screenwriters. We run a specialized marketing portal for directors and producers where we actively promote the best scripts from every season. This is your chance to be part of a curated selection seen by industry professionals looking for new stories. Moreover, the best screenplays receive our Main Prize of $400 for further development and career support from our professional jury.

Hey Forgers We’ve got a big week coming up inside The Writer’s Forge. If you’re new here, welcome. We’ve had new writers joining every day, so if you see a new face in the community, say hi. And if you’re new, don’t be shy. Introduce yourself. Jump into a live session. That’s where this place really comes alive. The live rooms are the difference here. This isn’t just another content library. It’s writers showing up, putting pages on the table, getting sharper, getting unstuck, and building momentum together. Here’s what’s coming up this week: Monday at 10am PT ✅ Coworking Session Start the week by getting words on the page. Bring whatever you’re working on and get some focused writing time in with the group. Tuesday at 10am PT ✅ Premium Coaching Premium members bring pages, scenes, pitches, questions, and stuck points. We work the material live. Wednesday at 10am PT 🔥 LET’S TALK BUSINESS: SCRIPT REQUEST SPRINT w/ Matthew LutzThis week’s Business Talk is going to be fire. Special guest Matthew Lutz will be sharing a method he developed called: SCRIPT REQUEST SPRINT: 50 Script Requests in 30 Days This is not a craft course. Nobody’s giving notes on your second act. This is marketing: targeted, repeatable, and built to get producers requesting your pages. If you want to understand how to get your work in front of the right people, do not miss this. Thursday at 10am PT ✅ New Member Orientation / CoachingIf you’re new, this is the session to come to. Bring your questions, your pages, your pitch, your confusion, your half-formed idea — whatever you’ve got. We’ll help you find the next right step. Friday at 12pm PT ✅ Premium Coaching More live feedback, table reads, story work, and coaching for Premium members. You can find links all events on the calendar here: https://www.skool.com/the-writers-forge/calendar Also coming this week: I’ll be posting Monday morning with updates on the Nicholl Fellowship reopening/deadlines, plus some thoughts on recent spec script breakthroughs, the pitch deck tools I’m building for members, and upcoming pitch sessions.

David Stem emphasizes that screenplays cannot be perfected in a vacuum. Getting your pages out of your drawer and in front of others is the definitive mechanism for transforming a raw draft into a commercially viable script. If you’re nervous about bringing pages, that’s a good sign. It means that what you’re doing is important to you, and pushing out of your comfort zone is key to expanding your skills as a writer. Reach out to me, @Anna Fermin , or @David Stem directly if you need support or have any questions about bringing your pages to a premium call. Here’s the link to where you put up your casting and your pages. Here’s the link for the Tuesday, May 26th Premium Coach Call. Here’s the link for the Friday, May 29th Premium Coach Call.