People, people! There's a New Member Orientation/Hot Seat/Welcome to The Cult Indoctrination call this Thursday at 10 a.m. Pacific Time! You are encouraged to bring the opening of your script, which we will read in a table read and then give feedback on. Or bring a treatment idea or logline. Or just come along to meet your fellow writers and get an earful of why this place was built, what my philosophy is re writing and why you can Save the Cat and neuter your script at the same time. Seriously, don't get me started on Save the Cat. Or do. It's always a fun ride! Who's in? If you have pages, drop them below and our man @Chad Desrochers will coordinate the line up. But seriously, if you're new here, know this: One call like this can change the entire direction of your writing. So, drop in and see if it resonates with you. If it does, you're in for an amazing ride. Just ask our members who's been here for a while how it's affected their scripts. Looking forward to meeting the new people who are here and ready to take their work to the next level! See you Thursday, David

Had an idea this morning while flying to NY. The 2 coaching sessions this week were electric — both writers broke through in ways that made me stop and think: what exactly am I teaching when I do this? So I ran the transcripts through ChatGPT and Claude to see what patterns they found in my coaching. After years of instinct, it finally clicked: what I’m teaching isn’t structure — it’s emotional authorship. How to write from your characters instead of about them. How to find the wound that shaped them, the lie that protects them, and the truth the story exists to expose. That’s the forge — the moment when a writer stops moving characters around the board and starts feeling what drives them. So here’s the experiment: Can AI be trained to help writers Forge Creativity, Not Replace It? I know — AI is the third rail of the creative world right now. But this isn’t about replacing writers. It’s about revealing them. I’m calling it The Primal Forge GPT. It’s not a note bot. It’s not a formula machine. It’s a tool trained directly on how I coach writers — to help you uncover the wound, lie, and truth that make a character come alive. The goal isn’t polished pages. It’s to get unstuck — to feel what’s really driving your story, the emotional engine beneath the plot. If you’re curious, drop a logline, a scene, or even a full treatment into The Primal Forge GPT and see what happens. This is just an experiment, so it might totally fail. No worries if it does — that’s part of what we teach here. Don’t be afraid to charge headlong down rabbit holes that might lead nowhere. Even a dead end is good data. If a few of you want to try it as a brainstorming or journaling tool and share honest feedback — useful or annoying — I’d love to hear it. This is just one of many tools I hope to experiment with and bring you in the coming weeks. Click here for The Primal Forge GPT. Let’s see if we can teach a machine to help us find more humanity in our own stories. 🔥

I have a general question. Before you pursue writing a script, what are the elements that make you decide to pursue that idea? Is it a story idea? A character idea? Is there a statement you want to make into the world? Is there a particular concept you find interesting and therefore you now want to dive in? Or do you have a small idea that you like, but you have no clue where it's going to take you in the story? Just curious. Thanks.

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.

Working on an exciting project that will help many Forgers write the screenplay of their dreams, plus market it when done. Anyone excited?