Screenwriting

It's the final scene to a heartbreaking love story, the lyrics do bring things together. The script is long, guess I'll need to do some cutting...

If you send the finished screenplay to a production company, they will in all probability ask you about the rights for the song lyrics before they buy your script. So if you plan to try to sell, I hope you have thought about this. Or perhaps you mean that you have yourself composed the song.

I composed the song, assuming it will be covered by the screenplay copyright?

I'm not sure, but you could contact the U.S. Copyright Office to be sure, David Miller. www.copyright.gov

I understand. Just remember, there are many screenwriters which include a specific piece of music in their script, without realizing that it can be unexpectedly expensive to secure the right to the music. So you should tell that you composed the song yourself.

I am an astronomer. I don't understand how a meteor can trigger the rest. Unless you that after people have seen the meteor in the sky, they hope there is a meteorite somewhere to find. Meteorites are worth their weight in silver, rare types are worth even more. And people who are looking for treasures may find something else, burried.

Hi Göran ,

Thanks for your comment.

I’d be happy to share the chapter from the book where this is explained.

The meteor event sets off a chain reaction that leads to everything else.

If you’re interested, feel free to DM me.

Best...

Feel welcome to send me.

Congratulations on finishing your pilot, Joshua Viers! The Pitch Sessions helped me get better at writing pitches and fix issues in my scripts.

Stage 32 is the Global Screenwriting Contest Hub (www.stage32.com/scriptservices/contests).

Marie Hatten Thank you, so so much Mattie. Lol, my years in auditioning, years of lots of "no's", and then that one "yes", have trained me well, and I keep going, giving up, is not in my program : ) And go for it! I'm excited for you to start your pitching, and above all, when you prepare your pitch, form experience, aside from the structure and the cohesiveness, and all that, love that pitch, love it, believe it, and do it with pure confidence.

I've always tried to avoid any and all opportunities for an in person (including zoom type in person) to pitch because of the impossibility to hit "delete" and start over. Thank you for your honest sharing!

Fran Tabor You're so welcome Fran, and I totally get that! Lol, it would have been a funny sketch if I could have paused, rewound time, and started over, lol. Alas... And we all have our likes and preferences, for sure. You must be a written pitch master, or getting there, then : ) And we all have our timings as well, pitching should never be a "because someone told me to do" thing.

"Written pitch master" LOL!

I've come up with some brilliant wording for others, because I'm able to focus on their story's prime attractor --- but I've learned the hard way how much more difficult that is for your own story.

Ideally, you're right. "Because someone told me to" is not enough reason for anything... but even as adults there are people in our lives we should seriously consider following their advice even when we haven't a clue why they are giving it. Just like when we were children and our parents had irrational rules about bedtime.... Some day I'll be wise enough to recognize worthy advice givers.

Fran Tabor Indeed: ) When we find the people, the mentors, the friends we trust, and when their words resonate true...that's when, based on our feelings, and our trust with them, we begin to trust...ourselves, and...maybe, go for it : ) It's all a process, and I'm so glad my post found you Fran. May 2026 bring you those words, and those whose energy, and wisdom, inspire you...to do that which your heart whispers, and the happiest of Holidays to you : )

by the way has any of you submitted any script for the annual greylist competitions?

if yes what do you know of it and its record of successes for the Stage 32 community?

by the way any S32 moderators over 50–hahaha time to say it out loud!

I’m 49 almost there!

Recently turned 50.

more new old friend requests sent hahaha

I was over 50 already when I directed my first no-budget TV movie, a little more than a decade ago.

I use writing prompts sometimes, Imola Orbán. I use the ones people make, not AI prompts. I add things to the prompts and change the genres sometimes.

I think it's a good way to practice writing on assignment, which is what most working writers do.

If you like idea generators, an old analog one can be downloaded from Archive.org. If my memory is correct, the title is Plotto, and that book was published in 1928.

I have used AI to translate a screenplay from my native Swedish to American English. Largely it worked fine, but one must always proofread. In some cases the misunderstandment was horrible.

To illustrate the problem, in an earlier project I had a person saying the line "Jag har lärt mig av imbeciller som skyller på insufficienser trots att ignorans är deras enda problem." In English that would be "I have learned from imbecilles who blame insufficiences even though ignorance is their only problem." But that would spoil the line. Because the three Latin loanwords I used are rare in Swedish but ordinary in English. So I used the three Latin loanwords to show that the speaker is more intelligent than the person she is talking with. So my actress had to repeat the line multiple times before it became correct, because it was so hard to say.

OK, so to reach the most people.. the recommendation would be to post on my "Your Lounge" area. Can do. Thank you.

You're welcome, Stephen Marinaccio. Yeah, the Your Stage Lounge. Happy Holidays!

I would suggest asking for permission from the Stage 32 CEO RB first.

is this the actual call for submissions?

No. ...but this is: https://www.stage32.com/lounge/promotion/CALL-FOR-SUBMISSIONS-Funded-Fea...

Because I am a writer. If I had a choice about the matter I would not change it. Before I knew I was I had written hundreds of in-house technical stuff.

That means the world to me Sandra Isabel Correia. Thank you so much my friend. And honestly, I don't think about the genre when I consider a premise. It just so happens that they fall into the genre that they want to and that most of them seem to be scifi or fantasy in some form. I let it choose itself.

Thank you so much Sandra Isabel Correia ! Absolutely agree and glad it resonated!

Lately, I’ve found myself gravitating toward horror more than ever, because it gives you such a powerful lens to explore themes like guilt, grief, and regret in ways other genres sometimes can’t. I’m actually working on something right now that’s set in a sci-fi world but still firmly rooted in horror. With this one, I’m exploring what love looks like in an automated world, and I love the perspective that gives me on something so simple—but universal—as love. How can I twist it? And in what ways is it already twisted for certain people?

Hi Sandra, I love putting my imagination on paper, it's fun

Sandra Isabel, I'm on this screenwriting-TV writing journey because I find it to be FUN.

And another reason has emerged for me these last six-going-on-seven years: I want to help give a voice to marginalized people...because the way the world is set up, it's got a whole lot more marginalized folks than meets the eye.

Way too many of us have been told that our voices, our experiences, our whole LIVES just don't count.

Joshua Young - Re: first-round reviewer and error-catcher. More of a writing assistant." That's my take.

Re: writing a full story from one prompt - I've never even tried the "Act as a screenwriter" context.

But I did goto Claude with a brain fart one afternoon and told him an idea called DRACONIS and we built it out. Had a great back and forth. However, before I got too far with it - I did the same thing I did with that PRAETOR idea, I ran the numbers as best one can to see where its potential in monetization was.While PRAETOR failed DRACONIS is amazing. It's far from complete, but it is a great story that once it's filled out with nuance and dialogue it has some great potentiality. The best part was not just scribbling down an idea, but taking it right to execution and building out the foundations and stage for the marionettes to dance and speak for the story. So the dialog will be all human built.

As to dialogue - Still not comfortable with the current results, and so all I've done with Claude was to build out a scene based upon the story writ large. Wasn't satisfied, close but not "me".

I did "Please produce some dialogue samples" and he did, but they were "meh". So I have refrained from having AI doing dialogue. Once I do my own dialogue - then I can "Final draft" it and convert it to HSWC.

as i've said, i don't use AI to write scenes or dialog for me--that's an absolute line i won't cross--not just for ethical reasons but because they're so transparently robotic and often hallucinatory. but i will ask AI for pros and cons in moving a scene from act 2 to act 3 in terms of story scaffolding, for example.

i'm gonna be specific now: i'm working on GUNPOWDER, which features two parallel narratives that take place in the same world--on the same day--but don't intersect, until 50 years later, when they briefly touch. spoiler alert one of my main themes is humanity vs post-humanity. when i ran my structural framework past GPT for comments, it responded:

Homo continuus co-exist with Homo sapiens the way we did with Neanderthals:

- briefly

- asymmetrically

- without understanding what was happening

understand: this is the story i was telling, 100%, but i had never framed the effect of my long interlude in those terms--not explicitly in the script, nor even to myself while laying out the plot. in 2.5 seconds, GPT read my underlying intent and wrapped it in a neat package--for me to dive deeper, or use in pitch/ explanatory materials. "to be honest?" i couldn't have put it better myself.

James LO "GPT read my underlying intent and wrapped it in a neat package". This is basic feedback and has value as it identified what you are doing. What you do with that insight is governed by your ability to tell a story. ChatGPT or other AI LLMs shouldn't be relied upon to tell you what to do or how it should be written. Otherwise. what is your contribution that makes it unique to you? The revelation your prompt provided is interesting, but I wonder why you didn't have some cognizance of what inspired in the first place.

Robert Franklin Godwin III you said you wondered why i didn’t have some cognisance of what inspired “it” in the first place. I’m afraid there’s some miscommunication — i wrote the parallel stories (of a human, and a robot which spoilers achieves post-humanity of sorts). these parallel stories don’t intersect except briefly in an epilogue set in the future. my writing was not based on AI suggestions and has not been changed by the AI comment which i quoted in my previous message.

all i was trying to say was that AI, after reading what i had written, explicitly compared my telling of the brief intersection of homo sapiens (us) and homo continuus (our post-human successors) to that of the historically real and likewise brief coexistence of neanderthals and homo sapiens. i hadn’t made that comparison in my script, and i was quite impressed when AI did. i was cognisant of what i myself had written, but i just hadn’t thought of the neanderthals comparison.

i hope this elaboration clarified my earlier statement.

James LO it does.