Hey friends, thanks for another great writing sprint today. These sprints are a great way to connect with other writers, discuss projects and spend time co-working on your script. It's a way to keep you accountable and to help stir the creative juices. Our fearless leader @David Stem usually joins us at the top of each hour to check in and join in the conversation. Next one is this coming Saturday.

Good morning, Forge. Here's what's moving in the industry today. - Spec Market Stays Alive: Brandon Cohen Sells Two Scripts in Back-to-Back Months — Paramount grabbed Cohen's comedy Bald Eagles for seven figures. Before that, he sold I Can See You're Angry to Miramax. Two specs. Two studios. Proof that original material still moves when the writing is sharp. Cohen is repped by Range Media Partners. The spec script is not dead. Write yours. - SXSW Hands Screenwriting Award to Four First-Timers Behind 'Plantman & Blondie' — Robb Boardman, Cory Loykasek, Donny Divianian, and Frankie Quinones took the SXSW Special Jury Award for Screenwriting for their buddy comedy Plantman & Blondie: A Dress Up Gang Film. These guys came up through sketch comedy, wrote what they knew, and a festival jury noticed. You don't need a traditional path. You need a voice. - Humanitas New Voices Fellowship Deadline: April 6 — This one's tailor-made for Forge members. The New Voices Fellowship is specifically for emerging TV and film writers who do NOT have a manager or agent. No representation required. No prior staffing required. Deadline is 11:59 PM PT on Monday, April 6. If you've got a script and no rep, this is your shot. Apply. - Sundance Names 2026 Screenwriters Lab Fellows from 3,800+ Submissions — Eleven writers were selected for the Screenwriters Lab and thirteen more for the Intensive, which supports first-feature projects. Creative advisors include Barry Jenkins, Lulu Wang, and Michael Arndt. The Intensive fellows are working on their very first features. If you're early in your journey, this is the kind of program that changes trajectories. Applications for next year's cycle will open later this year.

Excited for today’s sprint. I hope to see you there 👀 https://www.skool.com/live/Wxbh4b4YDNn 🖤🖤 Feel free to join if you want to write. Or work. Or just chill These are great sessions to be together and be productive. Or just some time to not be alone and have a great chat. Let’s goo! 🖤

Good session with pages from @Chad Desrochers and @Anna Fermin Chad brought in 7 pages of "David's Last Song" — his dystopian thriller set in a near-future Gambrel where a theocratic militia called God's Fury Manifested has just taken power. The scene opens with a group of old friends gathered at David's apartment. He's an intelligence agent who knows what's coming and invited them there to warn them — except the takeover arrives six months ahead of schedule, and David gets killed in the chaos. The world has real texture and a 1984 feel, where everything is already under the boot and nobody's pretending otherwise. I compared it to the opening of Orwell's book. No warm-up. You're just there, living it. The note for Chad: we need to feel what David actually wants in that scene. He invited them over. He knows things. Is he trying to arm them? Protect them? Has he been quietly building them up because he knows they're targets? Anna then read 6 pages of her pilot — a romantic comedy about Jaylene, a Filipino-American woman running a high-end matchmaking agency in Chicago. The cold open is a montage of tabloid disaster: soccer superstar Diego Medina's very public romantic implosion. Then we're in Jaylene's office and everything is funny and alive. The dialogue has a real easy rhythm, the characters feel lived in, and Eileen — Jaylene's mom — stealing the elevator with Diego before Jaylene can even get to him is exactly the kind of comedy that shows up when a writer knows who their people are. The note here was about landing on Jaylene. Right now we get her through the office energy and the karaoke bit, but I want to know she's great at her job before the chaos undercuts her. The mom works precisely because she deflates someone we've already built up. Anna put it perfectly herself: she's this confident CEO who turns into a 15-year-old the second her mother walks in. That's the engine. Mom wants Jaylene to find love. Jaylene spends her days finding love for everyone else. The irony is already there — we just need to make sure the audience knows what they're watching collapse.

Thought about you @Chris Dyer Have you heard of this coalition, initiative? Seems like something we should all be educating ourselves on. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DT8VsqID-Ps/?igsh=MWg2N3BxbmgxanQzdA== https://www.creatorscoalitionai.com