Emmy-nominated Hollywood screenwriter J. David Stem says, You must shift your focus from rigid story structures to character vitality, emotional truth, and rigorous rewriting. No one comes out of the womb writing like a pro. We have to write crappy and get notes, feel the sting of those notes, and get off the mat and write and write. Be courageous, bring your pages to the Premium calls, and start your journey of improving your craft and learning how to execute your voice clearly and effectively. Reach out to me, Anna Fermin, or David Stem directly if you need support or have any questions in 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, June 16th Premium Coach Call. Here’s the link for the Friday, June 19th Premium Coach Call.

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.

Hi everyone, I'm Michael from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. I'm currently working on an elevated horror feature called The Things We Carry and developing the second script in what I hope becomes a trilogy. The stories blend supernatural horror, mythology, mystery, and dark humor, but at their core they're really about trauma, grief, connection, and the things people carry through life. Some of my favorite films are The Sixth Sense, Hereditary, The Thing, Donnie Darko, Se7en, The Shining, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I tend to love flawed characters who are struggling against something inside themselves as much as something outside. The character currently driving me crazy is Byron, the protagonist of my feature. He's haunted by a supernatural entity and has spent his entire life avoiding confrontation and hiding parts of himself from the people closest to him. What drives me crazy is that he constantly wants to withdraw when the story needs him to engage. What I love about him is that beneath all of that fear, he's genuinely trying to do the right thing. Even when he makes terrible choices, they're usually coming from a place of protecting other people. Looking forward to learning from everyone here.

Okay granted you have to like horror. I love great horror. Took my daughter to see this and we both thought it was amazing, as did my son. There's a lot to learn here and I want to have a discussion about this. Especially about learning to seduce and invite the viewer into your movie. I'm traveling right now and we'll get this on the calendar soon. But if you haven't seen the movie and you want to be in on this, go see it! And we'll break down what's working and why soon! This is going to be part of an ongoing series where we talk about why a movie pops and what we can learn from it in our own pages. Led by yours truly. Talk soon! D