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Write From The Wound, Publish From the Scar

  • Holly Payberg-Torroija
  • .April 15, 2025
I attended a retreat facilitated by Elizabeth Gilbert and Rachel Cargle, and this was just one, of the many, important wisdom bombs Liz dropped on us at this wonderful 3 day retreat.   She said it in response to a question one of the participants asked: was it better to write from the wound or the scar? And I felt her answer was...
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Top Reads Spring 2025

The ISA Top Reads list for Spring 2025 has been announced! The writers' projects have been evaluated by multiple ISA readers, advancing through multiple stages of the Writing Gig consideration process, contests, and fellowship applications.After being heavily considered for our gig mandates and other submissions, these writers a...
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Who is Your Favorite Antagonist and Why? Mine is Ted Lasso.

  • Holly Payberg-Torroija
  • .April 8, 2025
Of all your favorite books, shows and movies: who is your favorite Antagonist and why?  I know for some of you that this is like asking you to play favorites amongst your babies, but just pick the one that is striking you at the moment.  For me, my favorite Antagonist, at the moment, is Ted from Ted Lasso. I know some of you mig...
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ISA Staff Picks: April 2025

  • Felicity Wren
  • .April 3, 2025
The ISA staff has selected these screenplays and their writers as outstanding examples in their genres and formats for April 2025. These scripts are being considered for submission to ISA approved agents, managers, producers, and production companies actively seeking talented writers to represent or compelling projects to produc...
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9 Game-Changing Screenwriting Lessons

Everything in life has a pattern. So does a screenplay.Writing a screenplay (or a novel or anything else) can be a lot like trying to assemble IKEA furniture without the manual - frustrating, a little chaotic, and filled with moments where you genuinely wonder your purpose in life (and let’s face it, those IKEA manuals aren’t mu...
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5 Writer Hacks That Will Save Your Story

Screenwriting is an art, and it’s never easy. When we think it’s easy, we’re probably missing something. That’s not to say that it’s supposed to be hard just for hard’s sake (I mean…telling someone a story and actually making them feel something over the course of two hours or an entire season of TV is tricky business), but it i...
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Horror at the Oscars: On "The Substance" and Crafting Your Own Nightmare

When we think of the Oscars, we don't immediately think of horror movies. But it happens. This year, we've got The Substance with five nominations and Nosferatu with four. Alien: Romulus can claim one nomination. Academy-lauded horror films of the past include The Sixth Sense, Get Out, Misery, The Exorcist, and Best Picture-winn...
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ISA Staff Picks: March 2025

The ISA staff has selected these screenplays and their writers as outstanding examples in their genres and formats for March 2025. They are being submitted to agents, managers, producers, and production companies actively seeking talented writers to represent or compelling projects to produce.Staff Picks:PRODIGAL by Chris Courtn...
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The Relentless Road to “Back to the Future”

There’s one trait every successful screenwriter must have, and it’s not just talent. It’s not even just hard work. It’s persistence. Grit. The ability to keep pushing forward when every door slams shut in your face. I was thinking last night about how to talk to emerging screenwriters about the necessity of more than just hard w...
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‘Yes, And’-ing Your Story Into Existence: The Sixth Sense Edition

Let’s do some more “Yes, and’ing” of movie stories, shall we? This time, I’ve looked at a screenplay that I originally covered on the job as a professional Reader, then watched it sell in a huge $3+ million deal for M. Night Shyamalan to write and direct the film that not only went on to become a huge hit, but at the time it bec...
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‘Yes, And’-ing Your Story Into Existence: The Hunger Games Edition

When watching a movie or TV show, I’m always thinking about how and why a story works, and how and why the writer made those particular story choices. I’m also intrigued by how the concept began. How small was the kernel of the idea when they began to formulate the story and how did they go about expanding on the original premis...
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The Art of Selling Without Selling Your Soul

Today is all about pitching. I worked with one of my coaching clients last week and he needed help with his pitch. It prompted me to really dive in and get into the nitty-gritty of how a pitch should be written and developed. You’ll notice that the process of developing a pitch is quite similar to the process of developing a sto...
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Celebrating One of the Best Minds in The Film Critic Community: Gene Siskel

Every now and then I will be treating this “Screenwriter’s Almanac” a bit more specifically. And today, I did a little research - a pretty wide net was cast with just a simple search of, “What cool thing happened today in history?” Yeah, pretty broad, so of course I focused it more around screenwriting and Hollywood, and I found...
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Zen And the Stages of Writing Growth `

Zen And the Stages of Writing Growth `ChapterHow do you learn to write better screenplays?  It’s a process. It starts with educating yourself about screenwriting, reading books, taking courses, studying screenplays, viewing films, and writing and rewriting scripts. You have to start out knowing that you’ll have much to learn, an...
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ISA Staff Picks: February 2025

  • February 3, 2025
These screenplays and their writers were selected by ISA staff members as standouts in their genres and formats for the month of February, 2025. They are being submitted to agents, managers, producers and production companies actively looking for writers to rep or projects to produce. Staff Picks: BACK FIRES by Alex Vincent Blum...
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Five Practical Things Every Writer Needs

I’ve worked in the entertainment industry, and specifically on the screenwriting and development side, for over 20 years. I sometimes marvel at that number, because the time has truly flown by. To think about who I was and where I was when I first jumped into this business…it’s a nearly night and day comparison. I still see elem...
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ISA 2024 in Review

  • January 22, 2025
As we look forward into 2025, we want to highlight some outstanding changes and achievements that occurred in the last year, both for the ISA and for our writers. By looking back at how far we've come, we can see the potential for ourselves and for the industry as a whole in the future. We are so grateful for this talented commu...
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The Explosion of the Creator Economy

What Is It? How Do We Utilize It? Is AI Here to Kill Us All? Is This What Will Change the World?It’s the buzzword that keeps popping up in your inbox, on social media, and in those inspirational LinkedIn posts your old college friend keeps sharing. Or maybe you haven’t heard this term at all. If you haven’t, then I highly sugges...
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Moving Your Mindset From Aspiring To Professional Screenwriter

  • Staff Writer
  • .January 20, 2025
And so it goes… What you think, you become. Dream and become it. These might seem like an endless stream of feel good memes on your social media feed, but they do serve a useful purpose, especially if you seek a career in a business as fickle, unpredictable, and unstable as screenwriting.The first thing aspiring screenwriters mu...
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Dear Hollywood, You Drove Me Crazy. Also, I Love You.

  • Coli B. Sylla
  • .January 17, 2025
As a screenwriter who toiled away for years honing and perfecting my craft, I often found myself wondering if the next script would be it, or if the next general meeting would put me in the presence of the gatekeeper assigned to me by the Gods of entertainment. Nothing I had hoped to happen for me in LA happened in LA. Instead, ...

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