THE SCRIBBLERS TOOLBOX
Welcome to the personal website of me, Jesse Alexander. It’s a home for my ever-expanding collection of screen scribbling tips, tools, observations, and topical ephemera for fellow creative types to peruse, use, disseminate, or disregard. Selections from this blog are also free on Substack. Subscribe to receive a fave weekly post sent to your inbox.
Blog Post Search Examples: plot, character, story, dialogue, transmedia, Lost, game, VALORANT, insanely, blather, Shane Black
Craft a Category of One
How creators can protect their work from the new generation of AI powered counterfeiters.
Before Lost, There Was the Collapse of the Late Bronze Age
I've been falling down a rabbit hole of Michael Button's archaeology videos on YouTube, and they're rewiring how I think about our civilization and… our storytelling.
When Madness Feels Like Home
Your creative routine might look insane to everyone else, and that's totally cool. I spent much of the 2000s scribbling TV shows while selling spec scripts. My wife and kids wondered if I'd ever sleep normal hours. But every scribbler knows, a creative routine worth anything rarely resembles balance.
ADD Accommodations W/O Guardrails DOA
Rising numbers of ADHD accommodations at art schools will fail unless we acknowledge the greatest challenge for a young creative.
Figma Founder's Mindset for Screen Scribblers
Founders think in decades, not days. A mindset two generations of screen-scribblers need as we lurch toward 2026.
The Mic Is the New Lens
Podcasting is Going Visual and Eating TV's Lunch
Ubisoft’s "Teammates": A New Tool for IP Scribblers?
How do you keep characters consistent when the world is too big for any one brain to track? Ask them.
What if the Innovator Stops Innovating?
Maybe the real intangible of the Warner Bros sale might not be antitrust, but the innovator’s dilemma facing the buyer.
The Hawksian Method for Screen Scribblers
When I worked with Alex Kurtzman and the late, great Roberto Orci, I watched them do something unusual with their early drafts. Before the action lines, before the scene descriptions, before the translation into screenplay form, they often created a version that was dialogue only.
The Anti-Distraction Blueprint
A deep work flow for beating the Algorithmic Antagonist.
When Seoul Beats Burbank
The Hollywood Guilds still think the threat is AI. The real threat is a kid in Korea with an iPhone and NanoBanana.
Your Short Film Needs a Side Hustle
If you're going to pour your time, money, and creative energy into a short film for a class, why not make it capable of doing more than collecting dust on Vimeo?
Warner Brothers IP = AI Food
Why a hundred years of Hollywood history matters more as data than entertainment.
The AI Excuse
Industries need a villain, and they’re reaching for the robots.
Chris Avellone’s Rules for Story Builders
These maxims were aimed at game designers, but they map cleanly to anyone building interactive stories, cross-platform narratives, or character driven worlds.
New-Gen Creators Need a New-Gen HQ
A physical home for your post-cinema content factory.
The Rise of the Post-Cinema Studio: EDGLRD
EDGLRD is building a lifestyle brand with its own production tools inside the walls. Creator studios will merge entertainment, fashion, and social identity into a single offering.
The Broad Collapse and the Niche Rise
Why screen-scribblers need to pick a lane if they want to survive the next five years.
Everything I Knew About Shooting Got Flipped 90 Degrees
9:16 storytelling is rewriting my widescreen brain.
Grindhouse to Scrollhouse: Vertical Micro-Dramas are the New Exploitation Cinema
How micro-dramas revived the B-movie hustle for the swipe generation.