Last week I experienced the power of mother nature when attempting to fly to Dallas for a connecting flight to Miami. Long story short, the three hour flight ended up taking nine hours due to poor weather, grounded flights, and holding patterns (a fancy name for flying in circles 40,000 feet mid-air, and K and I ended up spending the night at the Dallas airport.
It wasn’t all horrible though — I created a new short story idea, worked on a script I plan to shoot, and noticed something that inspired …

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The reason for the missing post last night was a little movie called Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I waited in line with my magic wand iPhone app along with all the other Harry Potter nuts and saw the film first thing at 12:01 – highly recommend you see the film and participate in midnight screenings!

Anyway, the film was fantastic and the characters …

I’m always on the lookout for interesting names that might make for good character names, so I thought I’d put together a list of a few of the most recent that I’ve come across.

Alamo
Atlanta
Archibald
Audrey
Calvin
Chaz
Chloe
Cuba
Diego
Dominic
Duncan

One thing that always entertains me as a reader is when a screenwriter adds a shade of mystery to a character’s background. It adds depth, darkness, and imperfection, which in turn reflects the human condition.
While creating mystery behind a character can be challenging — it can also be extremely minimalist. Though we’ve been trained to expect answers as an audience, this is not to say you as the storyteller always have to provide them. Withholding information is definitely an art, so there’s plenty of room to explore.
In fact, some of …

Character names, in my opinion, are one of the most difficult challenges of creating characters for a screenplay.
At the moment, I have mixed feelings about naming characters. One: I feel that no matter what you name your character, you can trigger the audience’s memory by branding your character in a way … through action and the actual speaking of your character’s name – more specifically, the repetition of speaking your characters name.
Take Fight Club for example – the two character names you remember most from that movie don’t even belong …

So, what’s you story? Answer this question and you’ll probably include a bit about where you came from, where you are, and where you’re going. The first portion of this answer is your character backstory.
The goal behind character backstory is creating character depth … or, undeniable realism. You want your character to be someone your audience will believe in. There should be no doubt that someone like your character actually existed, exists, or will eventually exist. Character backstory is simply one way to help your audience believe in your character.
To …