I saw the amazing new Wild Robot flick. It’s filled with amazing art, heart, and excellent filmmaking. It reminded me of another cinematic combo of machine and fowl -- Bastion and Ganymede from Overwatch.

The sublime art of making your audience feel through the power of a well-timed eyebrow raise or a subtle lip quiver.

New tools can feel like a threat not just to our livelihoods but to our identity and childhood aspirations. Many of us have built careers, reputations, and connections around how things used to be, and the thought of that being disrupted -- sucks.

Characters who consistently act rationally aren’t just rare. They’re hard to believe. They don’t resonate because, in reality, decisions are influenced by emotions, past experiences, and instinct.

The legendary playwright Anton Chekhov said, "If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired."

There’s an art to crafting character intros that'll make your audience sit up and say, "Whoa, who's that?" You've got precious few seconds to make your characters unforgettable.

If my wife ever finds out how much money I’ve spent on Call of Duty skins, she’s gonna be as annoyed as I was when I found out how much my son had spent on Fortnite skins. Oof. That said, there is more happening here than wallet-draining and family tsuris enhancement. The global generation that will inherit the earth is connecting cross-planet and collaborating via games as a service.

A school of thought believes adapting a beloved IP without prior knowledge or connection to the material or even the genre is a positive. Maybe that works. Sometimes. Once. Has it ever?

Make your audience forget they're staring at a screen and believe they're in your character's head, heart, and even their nightmares.

In the post-attention span era, scribbling pages that lower the barrier of entry and get folks turning pages is more important than ever.

Over the past year and a half, I’ve been experimenting with ChatGPT, Claude, MidJourney, Gemini, Eleven Labs, and others. They’ve become an essential part of my strategy.

As I prep my son for his first year at film school, I’m reflecting on my own screenwriting career path. It’s a story of surprise connections, enduring friendships, and relentless scribbling.

Use the eight-sequence structure to craft a compelling trailer for your movie that sets audience expectations.

The secret to scribbling genre tales that resonate is finding love, empathy, and relatable human connection.

Michael Moorcock was a true haecceity wizard. This guy scribbled novels faster than most of us can type a grocery list, and he did it all without sacrificing an ounce of depth or detail.

Let’s jibber jabber about the unsung icons of visual storytelling: establishing shots. The powerhouse moments and opening chords of your cinematic symphony – they set the stage, grab audience attention, and deliver a taste of the incredible journey to come.

Over the next few weeks The Scribblers Toolbox is returning to our roots with a series of posts re the tools and techniques of cinematic storytelling.

Haecceity is a medieval word for scribbling those juicy, specific details that make your characters, settings, and scenes come alive on the page.

Let Curiosity, Obsession, Resilience, and Empathy be the C.O.R.E. that supports your scribbler’s lifestyle.

My dance card requires Deep Work scribbling at the moment. I shall return.