I just got off a call that was supposed to be coaching me on how to make great YouTube content, but the call was way too vague and sales-y for my taste. And reminded me of what I DON'T want to be doing here. This call was basically "Make great content" and you eventually, somehow the algorithm will reward you! But no examples of great content were provided and I found the whole thing fairly useless. Then when the presenter told us we'd need 10 MILLION watch hours on YouTube shorts to be able to monetize, it was apparent they had no real idea what they were talking about. The whole thing made me feel this: If you're going to preach how to do something, SHOW ME SPECIFICALLY how you did it yourself. And SHOW ME SPECIFIC examples of how other people did it. Period. I have plenty of movies I wrote that I'm happy to give examples from in future sessions. How characters were set up, why the audience tied into them emotionally, and the thought process I and my partner used to do that. I want to have kind of a MUST KNOW library of movies to teach from here. I refer to Signs and Toy Story 2 often, because they are masterfully crafted, but I want us to have a community list of movies we are pretty much all familiar with ... and then I will search out the ones I can find scripts for, so we can see SPECIFICALLY what the writers did in creating the characters and scenes we love. This will be part of the classroom/community/coaching philosophy going forward. If you want to be involved and grow as a writer, you'll abolutely need to show up and do the work required - including knowing specific movies and reading the scripts! If you want to be a writer, this should be FUN homework and will really allow us to grow as a community going forward since we'll have a common film language. With that in mind, what are 5 movies you absolutely love and why. I'll create a master list of films and scripts and coaching sessions built around these! So, let's hear it!

Enrollment LIMITED, Closes SOON. Most of you have seen me coach writers in this community. You've watched me take a character that felt flat, confused, or inconsistent… and in minutes the entire story unlocks. Suddenly the writer knows exactly what their hero wants, why they're stuck, and what the film is actually about. Here's the truth: That's not intuition. That's not magic. It's a system I built over 25 years of pitching and landing writing jobs on massive studio films — the kind everyone in Hollywood is fighting for. I call it Emotional Authorship — and until now, I've never taught it publicly. 👉 ENROLL NOW — $397 Go to Classroom → "Emotional Authorship Intensive" https://www.skool.com/the-writers-forge/classroom ⸻ What Emotional Authorship Actually Is Most writing tools focus on plot structure (Save the Cat, Hero's Journey, etc). But structure is useless without a story that has a beating heart. Structure tells you what happens. It does not tell you why it matters — to your character or to your audience. Emotional Authorship is the missing layer. It's the framework behind every major film I've written or rewritten: Shrek 2, Jimmy Neutron, The Rugrats Movies, Are We There Yet?, The Smurfs, Disenchanted — and it's why studios kept calling me when the scripts they developed weren't landing. The system comes down to three elements: ⸻ 1. The Wound 💔 Sometimes the Wound is trauma. More often it's naivete — a mistaken belief about how the world works. Example: Shrek isn't relatable because he's an ogre. He's relatable because he's the ultimate bachelor — living a self-protective life that hides deep fear. He's convinced he doesn't need anyone. That's his wound. Fiona's wound mirrors the other side of the same insecurity: She believes no matter how she presents herself on the outside, she'll never be enough as she truly is. That's universal — and why audiences connected so deeply. ⸻ 2. The Lie 🎭