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The Writer's Forge
597 members • $7/month
Picks and Treasures
299 members • Free
75 contributions to The Writer's Forge
Apr 10 •
Welcome! If you're new, START HERE! 👇
Welcome to The Writer's Forge. You're here because you want to write characters that actually work. Let's get you a win right now. Step 1: Use the Primal Forge GPT. This is why you joined. Open the Primal Forge. Paste in your main character. In 15 minutes you'll know their wound, their lie, and the small life that's keeping them stuck. You'll walk away with a character blueprint you can use tonight. 👉 Primal Forge GPT Step 2: Introduce yourself. Drop a quick post in the community: → Where you're from → What you're working on → What movies and characters do you absolutely LOVE. And what's the ONE thing about your character that's driving you crazy. And what do you LOVE about them? Let us know. We read every single one! Step 3: Jump on a live Agent Readiness Challenge. Bring your first five pages and let's see where you are on your writing journey. Find it here: Agent Readiness Challenge Show up for yourself and build some accountability. Bring pages to a table read. Hit a coworking session when the blank page is winning. This community works because the people in it do. 🔜 Coming soon: The 7-Day Great Character Challenge. A step-by-step rebuild of your protagonist from the inside out. It's in development now. Watch the Classroom. You're already inside. Go use the GPT. Show up for yourself, for your talent, for your characters. And do the work with us. Now that you're here, remember: You never have to face the blank page alone!
1 like • 14d
So excited for you @Lena Lieuvin! What an exciting journey you are embarking on!
2 likes • 13h
@Adam Richardson you will love it here! The group is inspiring, David's coaching is stellar, and his Primal Forge GPT is the editor sitting across from you in real time! I wrote 3 different versions of my screenplay and made multiple revisions to my final draft and this would not have happened with this group!
2d •
Let's talk Script Competitions and how to use them as great motivators 👇
Your script has been "almost done" for how long now? Six months? A year? Three years? Here is the thing nobody tells you about finishing a screenplay. It does not get finished because you finally feel inspired. It gets finished because you finally focus the f up and power through to the end. And then the pesky rewrites. Without a deadline, you can be dead in the water. I once had to call my writing partner and tell him he had to give me a deadline on something because I wasn't working on it, but I thought about working on it all day. And he'd made the mistake of telling me, oh just finish it up whenever. So he told me next Thursday and next Thursday, it was done! That is what a script competition is actually for. A script competition can be your "next Thursday." Forget winning. Forget the laurels. Forget whether the contest "matters" or whether the judges "get" your work. None of that is the point right now. The point is a date on the calendar that you cannot move. Pick a comp. Mark the deadline. Now your draft has a job. A few real ones with real runways: Austin Film Festival. May 27, 11:59pm Central. Two days. If your feature is in shape, hit send. Tubi x Black List Horror Initiative. Open through June 30. One Black List evaluation gets you eligible. Tubi produces the winner. Scriptapalooza Fellowship. Final deadline July 1. Mentorship, not just laurels. Five weeks to get one script genuinely ready. Big Break, PAGE Awards, Shore Scripts. All have summer windows. Look them up. The number of writers in this community who have a script that is 85% there is enormous. The number who have a finished, submitted draft is much smaller. The gap between those two groups is not talent. It is a deadline. So here is the ask. Drop a comment below. Tell us: 1. Which competition you are entering 2. The deadline 3. The script you are sending Public commitment. We will check in. You do not have to win. You have to finish. More on the full comp calendar next week. For now, post your next Thursday.
Poll
13 members have voted
1 like • 16h
@Jason Smith the deadline for this year passed so get it ready for next year and let us know!
1 like • 16h
@Lena Lieuvin I am so grateful!
3d •
Primal Forge works!
When I asked Primal Forge GPT about my screenplay, it came up with this: A coming-of-age story that arrives 30 years late, disguised as a rugby reunion comedy. And this: After an injury and loss unravel her life, a woman returns to the rugby team she left behind decades earlier and discovers the men she thought had rejected her had been protecting her all along. I added this line: She learns that sometimes the worst thing that can happen to you is the best thing for you. Because that is what kept me going as I recovered from my injury and life unraveling into something surprising. And thanks to this amazing group, the guidance given and the tools available, I just finished my first screenplay in record time and without the emotional blockages I had when trying to fit in the "Hero's Journey" structure. I followed the "Wound-Lie-Reveal" structure that @David Stem created, and it was exactly what I needed! I have been working on this as a memoir for decades, encountering lots of emotional upheaval. I previously made a documentary film about the rugby players, and my agent said to cut my stories out. Now I have completed a feature film screenplay that I truly enjoyed creating and hope others will enjoy reading and, fingers crossed, watching. I am living by the words of Hunter S. Thompson, a friend to and client of my rugby brothers: "Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming 'Wow! What a ride!'" This has been such a wild ride, and I am so grateful to be here!
3 likes • 21h
@David Stem the First photo is the from the 1976 match BATS against the UK Barbarians. The BATS were the only US Club team to play the UK National team and score against them. My dad is the man on the far left standing in the stripped shirt. The man in the second row just under the guy in the solid blue shirt was Hunter S. Thompson's drug lawyer and the Co-Founder of N.O.R.M.A.L. The guy in the dark blue shirt is our Club President, the son of the Co-Founder of Betchel Engineering, and a CIA operative for 30 years who used the team as "Cover" to go to Russia. These were just some of my "Big Brothers" and protectors. The Second photo is me at the World Rugby Museum in London last October where I donated over 100 historical items from my collection and will have a display cabinet dedicated to the BATS, California and US Rugby for many years to come. They are highlighting the contribution my dad made as an Athletic Trainer because I made the case to the World Rugby Museum Director they recognize the players, coaches, and referees, but no one honors the people who patch them up and put the "Back in the game." Last year I distributed hundreds of items to New Zealand Rugby Museum, St. Helen's Archives in Swansea and a few significant rugby clubs and a museum in Wales, and then to the World Rugby Museum. That's my highest accomplishment so far. The Third photo is my Dad's Rugby Jacket that started when he was the Athletic Trainer for the Ottawa Rough Riders in 1957 and has been at the 1960 Winter Olympics where he was an Athletic Trainer for the US Women's Ice Skating Team, the 1972 Tour to Romania and Europe which was the first time an American team went behind the Iron Curtain to play rugby, and the 1978 Tour to Russia and Europe where the team was a cover for a CIA spying mission, and many, many more stories from that jacket's travels with dad. This jacket will be the centerpiece of the World Rugby Museum display in London. It's also has a role in the screenplay. Each patch tells a story and I am so grateful it will be on display to share with visitors from around the world.
0 likes • 19h
@Anna Fermin thank you!!!
5d •
17 questions for your character Ryusuke Hamaguchi
I was watching an interview from a french actress who plays in Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s latest film “All of a sudden”. They presented it to Cannes Film Festival and it’s nominated in a lot of categories. She was telling that the director, before they started shooting, gave her a list of 17 questions answered by her character. Some were completely unrelated to what happens in the film, but all were aimed at getting a better understanding of who the character really was. I thought it was an interesting approach. I’ve been looking all over the internet to try and find said list but it is nowhere. So I thought: why not make our own ? If we were to make that list, which questions would you include?
3 likes • 3d
When I used to perform in plays, a director would have us ask our character questions in an interview format. It was fabulous. Some questions were random, like favorite ice cream flavor, and how old when they discovered Santa wasn't real. Then some deep ones that would give the character more depth than the lines suggested: What did your first heartbreak feel like, and have you recovered from it? Who do you still want to argue with and why? Who do you need to apologize to and why? There were more, but the deeper you can go, the better the character will be when you write them into existence.
1 like • 19h
@Lena Lieuvin it was such an interesting concept to imagine sitting across from the character as a real person (even if they were just in our heads) and watch them talk. It helped so much to bring the paper character to life on stage and not us being us saying the lines.
3d •
Today’s sprint
Thank you to everyone that came to hang out and chat. Also we got some work done. Even Shopping done. And a bit of studying. ( I have been studying Michael Jackson’s short films. I used to watch them as a kid. And now looking at them as a creative. It’s been so interesting ( but I am such a huge MJ fan already though ) I love this community- just meeting up. Working and chatting. Getting stuff done. Thank you for coming @Chad Desrochers @Thia Markson @Isaac Tut @Chris Dyer @David Hinnebusch @David Stem @Jason Smith hope you all have a great day and I will see you tomorrow 🥰
0 likes • 1d
Always great energy to write by in these sessions! Thanks Pia!
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@cynthia-markson-8413
A Rugygoddess with some stories to share of growing up on the sidelines of rugby pitches in California as the "No No Girl" in the 1960s to 1980s.
Active 13h ago
Joined Mar 9, 2026
San Francisco
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