I couldn't resist myself. The thread I posted earlier from Reddit is exactly everything wrong with writing instruction today, and why I created this community. Check this out and comment here and on TikTok if this rings a bell with you and why you're here! My entire philosophy of teaching in one rant: Good Scripts vs Holy Shit Scripts In fact, this is exactly why I'm teaching the Emotional Authorship Intensive next week! If you haven't signed up for that yet, there's still room. Check it out and let's take your work to the next level! Here's the thread describing that seminar in detail.

Good people — I’m grateful for how this community has grown. The Hot Seats show every week how committed you are, and I love diving into the work with you. A lot of you have DM’d about private coaching. I love doing it — especially that moment when a writer’s eyes light up because they suddenly see their script in a new way after weeks (or months) of feeling stuck. The spark comes back, the idea feels alive again, and all the hard work they’ve poured in finally has a path forward. Maybe you know these feelings: - You were excited about your idea, but now you’re stuck and can’t see your way forward. - You want consistency, but procrastination keeps winning. - You’ve gotten notes that feel generic or contradictory. - You know something’s off, but you can’t pinpoint what. - You’re rewriting for the third (or fifth) time and wondering if the story even works. That’s where I come in. My time is limited, and to keep showing up here while staying on top of my own projects, I need a clear structure for the deeper story and script work many of you have asked for. So here are two ways to book me directly: 1️⃣ Monthly Upgrade — $297/month One private 1-on-1 session each month — designed to give you absolute clarity on your next steps and weekly accountability for the work you have in progress. If you’ve watched the Hot Seats, you know my process: I dive into the emotional engine, expose the blind spots, and uncover the version of your script that’s hiding just under the surface. It’s the same diagnostic work I’ve done for studios on Shrek 2, Rugrats, Disenchanted, and countless rewrites. We do that together, live. Real collaboration. Real breakthroughs. Real movement. This is for you if you want someone in your corner who won’t let you quit on yourself — someone who sees what you can’t see yet and helps you build the momentum to finish. 2️⃣ One-Time Session — $349 Same intensity and depth as the monthly sessions. We break open the real issues holding your script back — character, relationships, emotional logic, structure — and map out the exact next steps to move your story forward.

We kicked off the 5-Week Forge by talking about the movies we love. Why? Because the movies that matter — the ones that stay with us — didn’t come from writers chasing trends. They weren’t safe. They were personal. Even wild comedies like Ace Ventura: Pet Detective or Raising Arizona could only have come from the people who wrote them. Same with Shutter Island, Green Mile. Every movie on that list has such a unique voice. That’s what “write what you know” really means. It’s what makes YOU laugh. What terrifies YOU. What breaks YOUR heart. Over the next five weeks, your job is simple: find the story you need to tell. What keeps pulling you back? What delights you, scares you, makes you feel something real? Drop your ideas below. Start with one if you’re obsessed. Or up to five if you’re torn — we’ll help you find the one that burns hottest. Let’s hear it. What story do you need to tell?

Five weeks to uncover the story your audience needs — and the one that won’t let you go. All right, people — this is our first challenge we’re doing together, in real time. Five weeks of diving into what actually makes a story great. I’ve spent thirty years writing movies — everything from talking babies to ogres in love — and I still ask the same question: Why do some stories stay with us? Not just make us laugh or cry — but haunt us, years later. Over the next five weeks inside The Writer’s Forge, we’re going to dig into that. What makes a story unforgettable? Why does an audience feel something — even in a comedy? Why does a story matter enough to live in someone’s head after the credits roll? 👉 Here’s how we start: 1. Drop your top 3 movies of all time. 2. Tell us why each one hits you — a scene, a moment, a line, a feeling. 3. Then scroll the thread and jump into at least one other person’s post. The goal isn’t to make a list — it’s to figure out what moves us. And to BUILD COMMUNITY so we can SUPPORT each other in this process. I’ll be in here reading, responding, and pulling examples as we go — breaking down what these films do to us and how to find that same spark in your own stories. Doesn’t matter what you write — funny, dark, spiritual, absurd — the goal is the same: Five weeks to build community. Five weeks to find the fire in you. Five weeks to discover the story you NEED to write. Who’s in?? ps... if you have friends who are serious about writing, send this to them. Let's build this together.

Had an idea this morning while flying to NY. The 2 coaching sessions this week were electric — both writers broke through in ways that made me stop and think: what exactly am I teaching when I do this? So I ran the transcripts through ChatGPT and Claude to see what patterns they found in my coaching. After years of instinct, it finally clicked: what I’m teaching isn’t structure — it’s emotional authorship. How to write from your characters instead of about them. How to find the wound that shaped them, the lie that protects them, and the truth the story exists to expose. That’s the forge — the moment when a writer stops moving characters around the board and starts feeling what drives them. So here’s the experiment: Can AI be trained to help writers Forge Creativity, Not Replace It? I know — AI is the third rail of the creative world right now. But this isn’t about replacing writers. It’s about revealing them. I’m calling it The Primal Forge GPT. It’s not a note bot. It’s not a formula machine. It’s a tool trained directly on how I coach writers — to help you uncover the wound, lie, and truth that make a character come alive. The goal isn’t polished pages. It’s to get unstuck — to feel what’s really driving your story, the emotional engine beneath the plot. If you’re curious, drop a logline, a scene, or even a full treatment into The Primal Forge GPT and see what happens. This is just an experiment, so it might totally fail. No worries if it does — that’s part of what we teach here. Don’t be afraid to charge headlong down rabbit holes that might lead nowhere. Even a dead end is good data. If a few of you want to try it as a brainstorming or journaling tool and share honest feedback — useful or annoying — I’d love to hear it. This is just one of many tools I hope to experiment with and bring you in the coming weeks. Click here to access in ChatGPT: The Primal Forge GPT