Go Into The Story Resource: The Spirit of the Spec
Creativity meets Productivity in the 5 stages of writing a spec script.
On May 16, 2019, Go Into The Story turned 11 years old — you can read the very first blog post here. I led with this paragraph:
Welcome to Go Into The Story! Right now, it’s nothing but a humble, threadbare blog, but I hope it will evolve into an active resource for aspiring screenwriters, as well as a community for anyone interested in storytelling and the creative life.
And evolve it did! To the point where it was recently named “Best of the Best” Scriptwriting Website in the 20th Annual Writer’s Digest Best Websites for Writers list.
To celebrate 11 years of blogging about screenwriting, writing, Hollywood, movies, TV, and the creative life, each day in May, I’m going to feature a piece of Go Into The Story trivia, plus a writing resource you can find in the site’s archives. This is not an exercise in self-congratulations so much as I figured readers could use some tips about how to best use the site. With — to date — 26,429 articles and over 100 archive topics, there is a LOT of content here. Hopefully, these posts for the next 31 days will clue in more recent followers and remind long-time readers about resources you can use to facilitate deepening your understanding of the writing craft.
Today’s trivia: The Black List has hosted 12 feature writers labs since 2013, a combination of week-long events in Las Vegas and Los Angeles, and weekend mini-labs in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Toronto. I have been a mentor and workshop facilitator at all of them. In all, I’ve worked with over 60 Black List lab writers, several of whom have made significant progress in their writing and filmmaking careers.
With the exception of the 2014 Las Vegas lab, I have invited the participants to share reflections of their experience during our time together. Here are links to those posts:
Las Vegas (September 2013)
New York (May 2015)
Toronto (September 2015)
Chicago (October 2015)
San Francisco (October 2015)
Los Angeles (November 2015)
Athena Film Festival (February 2016)
Los Angeles (November 2016)
Los Angeles (October 2016)
Los Angeles (October 2017)
Los Angeles / Women In Film (February 2018)
Los Angeles (August 2018)
The next Black List Feature Writers Lab will take place in Los Angeles during the week of August 4–10th. The deadline for submitting your script for consideration: June 13th. For more information, go here.
Today’s Go Into The Story resource: The Spirit of the Spec.
Since I sold a spec script in 1987 to break into the business, it should come as no surprise I have a powerful belief in The Spirit of the Spec. If you are creative and have passion for a particular project… well, do the following:
Here’s to your creativity, my friends!
Each day this month, I want to take the opportunity to thank you for supporting Go Into The Story. I’d love to hear from you in RESPONSES. When did you start following the blog? What are your favorite features? And as always, if you have any suggestions, feel free to suggest away.
