I used to be a hungry writer with ideas, instincts, and zero map. No industry access. No real feedback. No one who could tell me what was alive in my work. I once wrote a magazine piece I thought would be my big break. Got a form rejection. Cried in the shower because I felt like an idiot for believing it might happen. I knew what it felt like to be isolated, broke, scared, and creatively unsure. To write things that were funny but shapeless. To be told the work was clever while knowing you could feel the writer trying too hard on every page. Then I learned three things the hard way. Talent isn't enough. Silence only changes when you take action. And real story doesn't start with structure. It starts with what a character is avoiding. Those lessons carried me through a 30+ year career writing and rewriting for major studios. Shrek 2. Jimmy Neutron. Disenchanted. Walking red carpets. Watching movies premiere. And eventually building this groovy little place to help serious screenwriters get the process, courage, and professional direction I wish I'd had when I was starting out. Want the process I wish someone had handed me back then? Comment YES and I'll send you the details.

POV: Malik Carter Primary Players: Malik Carter, Instant Cashback System, street vendors, luxury mall staff, The Whitmore family's unseen world(Darius, Camille, Aaliyah, Julian) Scene Goal/Function: Establish Malik’s survival life, introduce the system, and show his first transformation from powerless to dangerous. Start & End State: Malik begins hungry, homeless, and invisible. He ends with money multiplying in his hands and the first real choice of his life. We've had to make it a narrative since the timeline to complete these episodes fully would take more than a week. If this gets enough engagement, we will develop the episode and share it. Tools used: Story: GPT5.5 Images: GPT-Image-2 Videos: Seedance2 Editor: ClipChamp How to use the prompts: Story --> Beats --> Images --> 4x1 Images --> Editing

HEY FORGERS! This 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. DO NOT MISS THIS!!! "This isn't a craft course and nobody's giving notes on your second act. This is marketing: targeted, repeatable, and built to get producers requesting your pages." JOIN US on WED, JUNE 24, 10am PST. Link to Zoom call: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86850227314?pwd=Z9bwsCa7KTM0UTWYRaL5FOE8MzQRxa.1 Here's what to expect... SCRIPT REQUEST SPRINT: 50 script requests in 30 days. You wrote the script. It's good. It's also collecting dust on your computer, unread. The hard part was never the writing. It's getting the right people to ask for it. This is a 30-day system for making that happen at volume. Not one lucky break. A machine you can run again and again. This isn't a craft course and nobody's giving notes on your second act. This is marketing: targeted, repeatable, and built to get producers requesting your pages. You'll learn how to build: 1. A target list worth pitching — real producer emails, plus a LinkedIn pipeline of producers 2. Assets that get opened — a query letter that lands, a profile that reads like a working writer, swipe files, and a tracking tool so you don't lose track of all of your script requests and interested readers 3. A daily outreach engine — 50 sends a day, scheduled, tracked, and followed up with 4. The discipline to run it — until the requests come in, and then until one of them turns into a deal We all want to get read. But smoking "hopium" alone won't cut it. This is how you build a tactical and practical system that gets you read... on repeat. This system is about volume. It's not glamorous. But it works. ABOUT MATTHEW LUTZ • Matthew Lutz is a produced screenwriter who works on assignment • The project he's going to share with you in this case study ranked in the top 1% of Coverfly's Red List (out of 50,000+ projects)

Good morning, Forge. Here's what's moving in the industry today. - The Nicholl Fellowships submission window is open right now — and it closes fast. Public entries through The Black List opened June 8 and close July 6, or when 2,500 scripts come in, whichever hits first. The Academy hands five writers $35,000 and a year of mentorship, and they don't care who you are or what you've done. They care about the script. If you've got a feature draft sitting at "almost," this is your deadline. Stop polishing the logline and submit. - Eva Victor wrote and directed their way out of nowhere with "Sorry, Baby" — and Deadline put the full screenplay online to read. Victor was known as an actor. No directing credits, no produced features. They wrote a quiet, painful story about reclaiming power after trauma, A24 bought it out of Park City, and it ended the year with Globe and Indie Spirit nominations for screenplay and director. Read the script. Watch how a first-timer earns an emotional turn instead of announcing it. - The spec market is louder than it's been in years — 23 original specs and pitches sold to studios and streamers across last summer, with nine in August alone. That's the biggest single month since March 2017. The takeaway isn't "sell a spec tomorrow." It's that buyers are hungry for original voices again after a decade of IP. The door you were told was closed is propped back open. Have something ready to walk through it. - First features keep getting bought — John Early's debut "Maddie's Secret" landed at Magnolia, joining a wave of debut filmmakers getting distribution this festival season. None of these people had a track record the year before. They had a finished thing that made someone feel something. That's the whole game. Finish the thing.

@Isaac Tut put together an incredibly helpful presentation on how to use AI to help you shape your story and creative vision, allowing you to get the most of what AI was meant to be used for. There were so many great take aways from this call, but one that stood out for me was how MINDSET is a BIG part of how to get things done the right way. That we spend so much time on the HOW, when we should really be looking at the WHO. Our communities are rich with folks who have expertise in areas where we simply do not, so finding those folks and connecting with them (like we do here at THE FORGE) is invaluable in moving our projects forward. THANK YOU, @Isaac Tut for your expertise and generously sharing it with us. Isaac has invited anyone who would like to know more about how AI can help you and your project to reach out to him directly. THANKS to everyone who attended today, and of course BIG THANKS to @David Stem for giving us the platform to connect as a community. Remember, we are all here to help each other succeed. #biztalk