Story Rescue

     Here’s something that may surprise you.  

     Lack of sales – whether for screenplay or novel – isn’t usually a marketing problem. It’s a story problem. 

     And it’s almost always due to a lack of narrative drive.  

     So, to write stories that sell, you have to fix the story problems that are stopping you dead in your tracks. 

     When stories have narrative drive problems, at least 90% of the time the cause is found in the underlying structure.  

     Ideally, you want to identify and fix those structural problems at the beginning, before you write the full story, and they get embedded where it’s hard to fix them.  

     Here’s a dirty little secret: for most writers, the second draft is worse than the first. 

     Why? 

1. Rewriting is a skill that most writers don’t know. 

2. When you write the first draft, it hardens into mental cement.

     So, it’s much harder to fix. 

     Also, if you’re trying to write professionally, you need to be able to correctly set up the story fast.  

     But fixing structural problems is valuable – even necessary – at any time during the writing process.