If you hear the words “once upon a time,” you might guess that you’re hearing the beginning of a child’s fairy tale. And if you hear the words “and they all lived happily ever after,” you know you’ve ...

I think I was 7 or 8-years-old when I first read Harris & Me by Gary Paulson. Well, in truth, my mom likely read it to me but strangely enough, that’s not what I remember. It is the first time that I ...

This is an excerpt of a piece written by former NPR editor Jonathan Kern. It has been lightly edited. One of the under-appreciated challenges in putting a radio report together is ensuring that the ...

Once upon a time, a long time ago, I was considering the possibility that there might be more to screen drama than external conflict-driven plotting when, as if hit by a thunderbolt, a new paradigm of ...

“Despite huge changes in the technology of news, the structure of a story today doesn’t look hugely different from one in, say, 1932.” At the risk of sounding self-serving (you’ll see why below), ...

One of the big challenges for a writer is to take a compelling idea and then turn that into a coherent story that keeps your readers engaged. One strategy for keeping on track while writing is to use ...

This blog post originally appeared on Film Independent‘s blog and appears here with the permission of the author. The following is a true story. I did a script coaching session for someone I’ll call ...