Welcome to Widescreen Writing!

If you're reading this, hopefully it's because you have an intense desire- a NEED - to write, specifically movies. Starting in April 2012, this new screenwriting group will meet every two weeks with the goal of helping each other improve our writing and storytelling skills, and getting that screenplay finished!

The group is based out of, and will be meeting in Humble, Texas.  It's not mandatory that you live here, but if you don't think you can regularly attend meetings or are unwilling to make the drive, this group probably won't be very useful to you.

There is no cost to join the group, and there will never be any fees or dues.

Before getting too far into this, here's what Widescreen Writing ISN'T.

• This is not a group for learning the basic basics of writing and storytelling.  If you've never written anything before, you might want to start off with a more generalized writing group.  There is one that meets at the Humble Barnes and Noble every other Tuesday that is great for beginners.  
• This is not a group where we will spend a significant portion (or any portion) of the meeting sitting at our computers and just writing in silence.  There will be no writing prompts or timed writing exercises.  
• This is not a group who will write your movie for you or come up with a movie based on you, your crazy family, or your inspiring grandfather.  We can definitely put you in touch with someone who might be interested in working with you (and it might indeed be a member of our group), but the parameters of this group are to improve our skills and workshop our in-progress scripts.  
• This is not a group where you bring your finished screenplay simply looking for heaps of praise.  While you may be the undiscovered prodigy who has written the next Citizen Kane, 99.9999% of the rest of us need major and minor work done on our scripts, and the writers we want in this group are those who actively seek HONEST feedback on their work, and are interested in giving equally honest feedback on everyone else's screenplays.  If you believe your screenplay is perfect as is, then you don't need us to give you that validation, you need to be sending it out to agents in Hollywood!  

At Widescreen Writing, here's what we DO intend on doing.

• Workshopping our screenplays.  Every meeting, we'll go over five to ten pages of any member who is interested in seeing how a scene or section of their script plays out.  This might involve just emailing it out to the other members ahead of time for written feedback, or doing a table read during the meeting so the writer can take notes and get live feedback.  
• Brainstorming.  Sometimes, it's helpful to just throw ideas around for each other's screenplays to see what sticks.  This can be your brand-new idea, or parts of your current screenplay that you feel need some extra oomph.
• Writing process.  There are many screenwriting books, podcasts, DVDs magazines and websites out there, all of them with great tips and  even laying out entire processes.  We will discuss these, share tips and tricks, even share handouts if applicable.  It's not official, but all of the current members have read "Save the Cat" by Blake Snyder and highly recommend it, and we will probably be using terminology from that book by default.
• Pitching.  Every once in a while, we'll try to organize a "pitch fest", where we work on crafting the best way to present our scripts to prospective (hopefully) buyers.  This will involve us pitching our stories to each other (and possibly media-savvy associates or friends) and trying to discover the most interesting, compelling, exciting way to tell people what our scripts are about.  We'll go over loglines, synopses, the "elevator pitch", and slightly longer pitches.  This is the part that most falls outside of a writer's comfort zone, but if we ever want to get our screenplays out in the world, this is one of the necessary steps.  And it's not as scary as it sounds.  
• Collaboration.  While this isn't a group for getting your film made, it IS made up of people who are professional filmmakers, soundtrack composers, writers and video producers.  We are always in some stage of production on a web series, short film or other project, and if the other non-writing aspects of film production interest you, there will be opportunities to observe and perhaps participate, and meet up with other filmmakers and actors who may eventually be looking for someone to write a script for them.  And as these sorts of groups go, there is usually some sort of group project that emerges where everyone gets a chance to contribute if they are interested.  
• Script coverage.  We have access to hundreds of produced and unproduced screenplays, and occasionally we will assign ourselves a screenplay to all read and then share our reactions to it at a subsequent meeting.  We will do this the same way Hollywood script readers approach it so we are better able to judge our own scripts in the way they will be judged.  Plus it's pretty neat reading other screenplays anyway.

While no one at Widescreen Writing has a produced full-length screenplay to their credit, it is (currently) made up of working filmmakers who have more than a dozen short films and web series to their credit, as well as participation in general writing groups for nearly a decade.  We know what we're doing, but we also know what we need to improve on (a lot), and if you're interested in participating, we'd be happy to have you join our group.

Our first meeting will be in early April (TBD), so if you're interested, please email me at victor.digiovanni@gmail.com with the subject "Widescreen Writing", and tell us a little about your writing experience and aspirations.

Hope to see you there!