CHOOSING YOUR STORY. Start with a conflict / Mardik Martin, Hunter Hughes -- The cringe exercise / Hal Ackerman -- Trusting yourself / Alan Watt -- Note card R&D / Brad Riddell -- Concept is king / Chandus Jackson -- When Sally met Harry / Barri Evins -- The comfort zone / Christina M. Kim -- Finding our story / Paula C. Brancato -- GET WRITING. Binding and gagging the internal critic / Kim Krizan -- The talking cure / Wesley Strick -- The almighty verb / Beth Serlin -- Throw the book away / Alexander Woo -- Feeling the music / Daniel Calvisi -- It's the read: writing great film narrative / Glenn M. Benest -- Dream on / Nicholas Kazan -- Random thoughts / William M. Akers -- Analyzing your characters / Susan Kouguell -- The power of negative thinking / Kevin Cecil -- When great writing meets a great actor: writing for a star / Hester Schell -- Police investigation / Brad Schreiber -- Write truthfully in imaginary circumstances: the mythology inside you / Mark Sevi -- Postcards from the edge of creativity / Sam Zalutsky -- Found in translation / Coleman Hough -- STRUCTURE: The most important thing I know and teach / Chris Soth -- The character-action grid / David Trottier -- Writing in the dark / Jim Herzfeld -- The newspaper exercise / Linda Seger -- 21 questions to keep you on track / Neil Landau -- Key things to know about your script before you write / Barbara Schiffman -- Four magic questions of screenwriting / Marilyn Horowitz -- Creating unpredictability using subgoals and plot twists / Richard Stefanik -- Your outline is your ilfeline / Michael Ajakwe, Jr. -- The tool kit: resuscitative remedy for writer's block and blank-page elimination -- The genre game / Bonnie MacBird --

THEME. How to move a pile of dirt / Danny Rubin -- The emotionally charged icon / Karey Kirkpatrick -- True love / Michael Hauge -- Finding universal themes / Jen Grisanti -- Refining the idea / Stephen Rivele -- The thematic line of dialogue / Barry Brodsky -- The emotional outline / Karl Iglesias -- Writing from experience, or, Grandma's teeth fell into the soup again / Paul Chitlik -- Change your perspective / Michael Ray Brown -- The union of opposites / Scott Anderson -- From end to end: the creative compass / Michael Feit Dougan -- CRAFTING SCENES. Rhythms, levels, and the proper respect / Michael Genet -- Some things are better left unsaid / Colleen McGuinness -- Self-knowledge availed us plenty / Tommy Swerdlow -- What happens next? / Sara Caldwell -- Scenes as concepts / Craig Kellum -- Crafting the kick-ass scene / David Atkins -- Visual storytelling / Larry Hama -- What lies beneath / Allison Burnett -- Write cinematic scenes / Stephen V. Duncan -- I know what you're thinking: dialogue, context, subtext / T. J. Lynch -- One-page character introduction / Valerie Alexander -- Better than irony / Howard Allen -- CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. On creating character / Syd Field -- Give me a dramatic truth or give me death! / Bill Johnson -- Creating characters who work for you, not against you / Linda Cowgill -- Approach character like an actor ... from the inside out! / Madeline DiMaggio -- The character's trailer shot / Billy Mernit -- The scene that doesn't exist / Christine Conradt -- The key to charismatic characters / James Bonnet -- Go ask Rosenkrantz / Glenn Gers -- Character bones / David Skelly -- The riddle of the sphinx / Marilyn R. Atlas -- The character diary / Douglas J. Eboch -- Getting inside your character's head by becoming her pen / Laura Scheiner -- Life before fade in: / Pamela Gray -- Loving and loathing: how to get into your characters / Richard Walter -- Getting to know your character / Leslie Lehr -- VERBAL AND NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION. Find your inner actor / Amy Holden Jones -- On dialoguing, the screenwriting anarchist's way / Peter Briggs -- Nonverbal communication / Andrew Osborne -- The big eavesdrop / Mark Evan Schwartz -- The twitch: objects as emotions / William C. Martell -- Funny faces: tips on writing animation / Aydrea Walden ten Bosch -- False emotion / David Freeman -- Building between the lines / Judy Kellem -- Using metaphors in comedy / Steve Kaplan -- Pick up a party line / Jennifer Skelly -- Backward brainstorming / Pilar Alessandra -- Hurt me, hurt me! (Oh, and help me make my script better) -- The jewel case outline / Jim Strain -- "Aloud,' he cried!" / Jayce Bartok -- Screenwriters: stop shooting yourself in the foot! / Charles Deemer -- The first ten pages / Ken Rotcop -- Prose (and cons) / Billy Frolick -- What to do when you're stuck on a creative problem / Peter Myers -- Button it: the cure for overwriting / Devorah Cutler-Rubenstein -- Finishing a script: the actor pass / Glen Mazzara -- NOW WHAT? Creating the killer log line / Bill Lundy -- What if it were your money? / Heather Hale -- How to find and get an agent / Michele Wallerstein -- Author Websites.