Hello dear Forge ! This week I did something really, really cool in Paris: I went to a week-long training with producers and script doctors to work on my pitching skills for my feature film "The Red Arch". Not only have I learned A LOT about the French film industry, but specifically, I have learned that my feature film will be extremely hard to produce in France, for budgetary reasons (French cinema doesn't have the same production budgets as the US unfortunately). The producers I met did not exactly say "it will never be produced" but that's clearly what they meant. They strongly suggested I try pitching in the US directly and not lose time in France. The issue : I have 0 contacts in the US! 🇺🇸 So, I was wondering if enrolling in pitching contests could be a good strategy to start meeting people and maybe get some contacts. Do you have an idea of interesting contests that I could participate in ? Or any opinion on this ? As always, thanks for your companionship (makes me feel less alone 😅🫶🏻)

And your thoughts... This is a tool I'm creating for the upcoming workshop. I told ya'll there was a lot going on behind the scenes! Great Characters - Session 2 - The Diner Test

This is live for the next hour. Walks through the foundational ideas I teach here. Click this and lmk what you think and if it works! Creating Great Characters

I wrote this in ChatGPT: "Failure is not an option though it is a prerequisite to success." AI literally has NO skin or subjective faith in the game of life and writing and retorted this: "That statement mixes two ideas that don’t fully agree with each other. - “Failure is not an option” implies zero tolerance for error. - “Failure is a prerequisite to success” implies error is unavoidable and necessary. In practice, the second one is operationally correct." Don't get me wrong. AI is a lovely sweet analytical TOOL. But it doesn't bleed on the page.

well, I mentioned the book and now I’m getting ads for it so I checked one out it’s pretty awful but it’s a huge market for new writers. I was thinking it would be interesting to see if I could actually write in this format as an exercise in writing with 0 fluff…(Please yell at me ) But: The global vertical‑drama market was valued at about USD 4.1–4.7 billion in 2024–2025 and is projected to grow to roughly USD 8.4 billion by the early 2030s, implying a high‑single‑digit to low‑double‑digit compound annual growth rate. Here is just one: https://my-drama.com/ PS: don’t buy that book. It’s full of errors, probably why she was giving it away at the conference, but it’s still an interesting read.