by Trevor Mayes | Aug 18, 2023 | Industry Advice, My Experiences
No Pay, No Gain At my first Pitch Fest many years ago, one particularly helpful production company rep, who sensed I was new to the game, gave me this advice: “Never work for free.” As I was processing what he was saying, he reiterated: “No,...
by Trevor Mayes | Jul 29, 2023 | Style, Transitions, Writing
Time keeps on ticking, ticking, ticking… me off I’ve been seeing a lot of these kinds of shenanigans in the scripts I’ve been reading lately: Sarah watches the front door for a few minutes, anticipating Dan’s return. A “few...
by Trevor Mayes | May 3, 2023 | Action Lines, Style, Writing
What were they thinking? In novels we become spoiled, being able to peer into a character’s mind to know what they are thinking. As a screenwriter, we don’t have that luxury. We must only write what the audience can see or hear. Otherwise, they’re...
by Trevor Mayes | Apr 17, 2023 | Quick Screenwriting Tips, Scene Headings, Scenes, Writing
Establishing When you just want to show a quick EXT. (exterior) shot of a building, before setting up the INT. (interior) shot, is it okay to use a scene heading without any scene description below? Yes! But — you need to add ESTABLISHING after your scene...
by Trevor Mayes | Jan 9, 2023 | Artificial Intelligence, Tools, Writing
We Are Living In The Future! As screenwriters, we’re always looking for tools and ways to take our writing to the next level. Enter ChatGPT! ChatGPT is a language model developed by OpenAI that uses machine learning to generate human-like text. It has been...