JOIN US TODAY, WEDNESDAY, MAY 27, 10am PST for an exciting LIVE WORKSHOP with our very own @Chris Dyer . Read all about it, then click on the LINK AT THE BOTTOM to join the call. MICRO DRAMAS & THE FUTURE OF STORYTELLING A Live Workshop with Chris Dyer Link to Chris' original post: https://tinyurl.com/chrisdyerliveworkshop What if Vertical Dramas/Micro Series weren’t just “TikTok content”… but a strategic tool to get your REAL Film/TV projects seen, built, financed, or even discovered? In this live workshop, we’ll break down the rapidly growing world of Vertical Storytelling — from platforms like ReelShort and DramaBox to the larger creator economy shift happening across TikTok, YouTube, and beyond. We’ll cover: - Why vertical dramas are exploding globally - How mobile-first storytelling changes writing structure - Hook + cliffhanger engineering - Why audiences get addicted to these formats - The difference between traditional TV writing vs vertical pacing - How creators are using verticals as proof-of-concept IP - AI, creator-owned entertainment, and the future of Hollywood - How verticals could help writers get visibility, build leverage, and create opportunities for their “real” projects - Production, monetization, and viral marketing strategies - A live mini writer’s room + working session where you’ll start building your own concept This is NOT a “TikTok is the future, cinema is dead” lecture. It’s a practical, honest, and slightly rebellious conversation about where storytelling, audience behavior, and creator leverage may be heading next. Whether you’re curious, skeptical, fascinated, terrified, or convinced verticals are destroying civilization… this workshop is designed to challenge your perspective and give you actionable tools for the modern entertainment landscape. Because the future may belong to creators who stop waiting for permission. Be there or be square!!! This will be an information packed workshop where you will leave more informed about verticals/Micro Dramas, Inspired to Take Action and I'm really hoping (or is it hopping... that one always confuses me) that you're at least impressed with my Slides.

Hi all, I was swiping through TT the other day and came across Issa Rae's new vertical drama. Her account on that platform is "HOORAE Media", if you want to search for it. There are 26 episodes released so far. Not clear yet whether she's releasing the entire thing on TT or just getting us hooked and then there will be a paywall elsewhere. 😅 But the cool thing is that the writing is decent, the acting is pretty good, and it won't be torture or cringe to watch it. I found it super-instructive in the structure of a 1-minute episode for vertical dramas with no friction in accessing it. Curious what others think of it so far!

Edit: People, go find the openings, edit your threads and drop them in so we can all see them! Just wrapped the new members call. Talked through the 5 things I look for when I open a script. Every one of them has to show up in your first few pages. Usually not because you planned them on page 1, but because you did the real work everywhere else. The opening is one of the last things you write. You launch out to sea. You find your way back. Then you build the opening that earns it all. Here they are. 1. Voice Not showy. Not clever. Confident. The reader needs to feel, inside a paragraph, that you know what you're doing. That you didn't research this world, you lived in it. When you read Tim's script, the machinery is dense at first. Helicopters, gear, procedure. And then you settle in and think: oh, this guy is the real deal. That's voice. It's the subconscious trust you build with a reader who's looking for any excuse to stop reading. 2. A Great Character We Can't Look Away From Someone with a primal drive we recognize. Even if they're working against themselves. Woody is jealous. Marty Supreme is a con man. Rick in Casablanca is closed off and cynical. Shrek is a bachelor hiding in his man cave. The moment we meet them, something hooks us. Usually because the character is in conflict with themselves and doesn't even know it. External obstacles bore me. Internal contradiction is where the good stuff lives. 3. A Fresh Premise Usually a familiar genre with a surprising angle. Signs is every alien invasion movie ever made, but tiny. One house. One widower. A crisis of faith. Shrek 2 was pitched to us as Meet the Parents, only Fiona brings home Shrek. Take something that feels done. Give it a perspective nobody's seen. That's the job. 4. A World That Feels Lived In Specific details tell the reader a real person lives here. Page 1 of Signs. Graham walks into the hallway, picks up a balled-up pair of sweat socks and a kid's sweater from the floor, drops them in the hamper. He's a parent. That one beat does more than five pages of dialogue ever could.

Good morning, Forge. Here's some great stories about writers breaking through in the last week or so: - Stephanie Ahn Spent 8 Years on Her First Feature. Sony Pictures Classics Just Bought It. — Stephanie Ahn wrote and directed Bedford Park, a story about a Korean American woman caught between family obligation and identity. It premiered at Sundance, won the Special Jury Award for Debut Feature, and Sony Pictures Classics picked it up. Their words: "the confidence of a master." She found her lead actress in Korea six years ago and rehearsed over Zoom for months before they ever shot a frame. Eight years from blank page to Sundance stage. That's not a slow career. That's a writer who refused to let go of the story she needed to tell. - Adrian Chiarella: From Editing Room to Neon's Seven-Figure Deal — Chiarella spent years as a film editor, working under Baz Luhrmann. Then he started directing shorts. His first, Touch, came in 2014. His second, Black Lips, in 2018. His third, Dwarf Planet, in 2021. Each one a little bigger, a little bolder. Then he wrote Leviticus, a queer social horror, developed through VicScreen's Originate initiative. It premiered in Sundance's Midnight section. Neon bought it for seven figures. A decade of shorts. Then the feature lands. That's how this works for most people. You keep making things until the right thing finds the right moment. - Ramzi Bashour Grew Up in Beirut. His Debut Feature Just Got Acquired at Sundance. — Bashour is Syrian-American, raised in Lebanon, moved to Indiana after 2006. He wrote Hot Water about an American kid and his Lebanese mom on a road trip west after the kid gets expelled. It's personal. He was a Sundance Fellow three years running (2022, 2023, 2024) developing this script. Named one of Filmmaker Magazine's "25 New Faces." The film debuted in U.S. Dramatic Competition and Rich Spirit acquired it. Three years of development. One story he couldn't not write.

As always, it's about having a voice and a fantastic idea, delivered in such a way that the reader says (early on)... who the hell wrote this?? A Sociology PhD With No Agent Sold a Spec for $3 Million. Natan Dotan had no representation. No credits. No Hollywood connections. His resume includes a PhD from Columbia, a career in biology, ad analytics, and running an NGO in Sierra Leone. Then he wrote Alignment, an AI thriller set over 36 hours at a tech company careening toward global catastrophe. Fifth Season and Makeready bought it preemptively. $1.25M upfront against $3M if the movie gets made. That kind of deal hasn't happened for an unknown writer since Shane Black was selling specs in the '90s. The takeaway isn't "write about AI." It's that a specific voice rooted in real-world experience still cuts through. (Hollywood Reporter) Five New Nicholl Fellows Just Got Named. Their Scripts Are Worth Studying. The Academy announced its 2025-2026 Nicholl Fellowship winners, and every single script leads with character. Leo Aguirre's Verano follows a withdrawn Texas teen whose world cracks open when his parents foster an asylum seeker. Lynn McKee's I'm Ready to Go Anywhereis about a ten-year-old parenting her own mother in 1980s Phoenix. Satoshi by Sara Crow and David Rafailedes tells the story of a teenage hacktivist who invents Bitcoin after her family loses everything in 2008. These aren't high-concept pitches. They're deeply personal stories with specific wounds driving them forward. Academy member participation in reading submissions jumped 149%. The industry is hungry for original voices. (Deadline) Ten Short Films Just Made New Directors/New Films. The Festival Is Live Now. The 55th ND/NF opened yesterday at Lincoln Center and MoMA, running through April 19. Ten shorts were selected from a global pool, with first-time directors from the U.S., France, Guinea-Bissau, and India in the lineup. Shorts remain one of the fastest paths to getting noticed. Tribeca's shorts program alone has produced 25 Oscar nominations over 24 years. If you're developing a short, you're building in the right ecosystem. (Film at Lincoln Center)