Podcast

Monday, May 29, 2017

Special Guest Picks: The Archive

Hey guys, remember when this used to be an underrated movies blog? Most of you probably don’t, but if you journey all the way back to January 1st, 2010, you’ll find that I blogged about a new movie every damn day for a long time. Eventually, just to save my mind, I started blogging about story in order to give myself some days off from the three-hour grind. Another way I would take a break sometimes would be to invite guests around to share their own picks. I still have all 148 Underrated Movies in their own sidebar, so I won’t archive those, but I never put the Special Guest Picks in the sidebar, so let’s archive those, shall we?

Sunday, May 28, 2017

Losing My Religion (aka Writing Misconceptions): The Archive

 Did you know that books take a long time to write, and even longer to make it into the hands of readers?  This series is from late 2012, and it came about because I had gotten serious about writing the book (after spending two years generating the material).  The book finally came out almost exactly four years later, and now six months after that, I’m proud to say that it’s a success.  (I forgot to tell you guys that the audiobook was the Deal of the Day on Audible a few days ago, sorry!)

Thursday, May 25, 2017

The Narrative Breakdown Podcast: The Archive

Here's another one that never made it into the sidebar for some reason, so it’ll be new to a lot of you. Hey guys, did you know that before I had my own podcast, I was a semi-regular guest on the Narrative Breakdown podcast with James Monohan and Cheryl Klein? We covered a lot of good stuff over the years, and here I am archiving it for the first time. Enjoy! (And once you’re done listening to these, go back and listen to all the others!)

Unfortunately, these links aren’t working anymore, but you can still subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and find each of these episodes there:

Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Head-Heart-Gut (aka How to Create a Polarized Ensemble): The Archive

Here you can follow the development and maturation of this idea over several years.  A lot of this made it into the book, but I regretfully couldn’t include my obsessive diagrams, such as the one above.  I used to put so much time into these things!
And here’s where I actually define it if you just want to skip to here:
Oh why not, here’s one more diagram- I loved making these things:

Monday, May 22, 2017

The Hero Project: The Archive

This is where it all began.  I decided to branch out from my Storyteller’s Rulebook pieces and start thinking seriously about story, and charted my thought process in real time.  A lot of this ended up in the book, in a very rewritten form, but a lot of it didn’t.  My favorite one that didn’t: Hitchcock In The Shadowlands

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

What I Wish I'd Heard at Graduation (aka How to Get Ahead): The Archive

This is another one that’s somewhat painful to archive. I wrote this when I was a cocky 30-something in the first blush of career success. There’s a lot of stuff here that I’m no longer sure I really believe, now that I'm a more grizzled 40-something. Nevertheless a lot of this is pretty good, so I’ll let you pick through it and evaluate it with your own bullshit-meter.

Monday, May 15, 2017

How to Give and Receive Notes: The Archive

This series, for whatever reason, is not in the sidebar, so I completely forgot it existed until I had to link to it yesterday. It’s full of good stuff!  I laid the groundwork here for my current sideline giving notes professionally.

Sunday, May 14, 2017

All the Charts Mentioned in the Book (and Some That Aren’t)

I just got an email from a book reader who pointed out that I promise readers that they’ll find some charts on my blog, but those charts aren’t actually easy to find here. So here’s the afterword of the book, annotated with where you can find these things on the blog:

Thanks for reading! For more advice, examples, and bonus material, please visit SecretsOfStory.com. You’ll find:
Bonus, I’ve finally started using Google Docs not SendSpace for the downloads, so hopefully the links won’t constantly die.

And hey, good news: The book seems to be doing well!  I’m happy to report that I’m up to 25 reviews on Amazon: 24 five-stars and one four-star. And remember, you can also get the book on audio on Amazon or at this link!