Jeffrey Scott's Recent Posts

As you graduate today, and face an uncertain jobs market, many of you are asking yourselves 'What does the future of animation hold for me?'   To see what lies ahead, one only need look to the past...

I’m going to use this post to vent a little—but also to make a point specifically for the benefit of all the producers around the world who want to make animated features.

Self promotion turned out to be the hottest topic yet on my blog.  My three posts on the subject are approaching 6,000 reads! I have received dozens of comments, both on the blog and at LinkedIn, over 95% of which were in agreement that self-promotion is vitally important. You get it!  That's good!  Here's what I got...

I got a huge response to my last post, Why Do Many Artists & Writers Hate Self-Promotion?, including several active discussions on various LinkedIn groups. Self-promotion is a very hot topic! Many of the people who commented on the post talked about their shyness, self-doubts, the unworthiness of their creativity, and other barriers to promoting themselves and their work.  One of the biggest concerns was whether or not self-promotion was really effective.  Well, let's find out...

Do you write part time?  Do you write for just a few hours a day?  Are you writing a spec screenplay a few days a week or month? If you answered any of these questions in the affirmative you may be losing more time (and creativity) than you think. Let me give you a few suggestions that will help you get a lot more writing done...

In my previous post, How to Turn Microsoft Word into a Terrific Screenwriting Program, I explained how to use Word’s “styles” to automatically create script formatting.  I received a blog comment from Ben Cahan, the creator and co-founder of Final Draft, who pointed out that a true screenwriting program was more than just “margins and capitalized slug lines and character names”.  Ben makes a good point.  Whereas Word allows you to easily and automatically format basic script elements such as slug line, action, character name, parenthetical, dialog and transitions, that’s about all it can do.  Final Draft, in contrast, does those things and much more.

Before you run off half-cocked with that shiny new animated six-shooter of yours, here are a few pieces of advice that will help you live long and prosper in this business. It would be foolish to think you could become a good animation writer without first understanding a little bit about creativity, especially considering cartoon writing is one of the most creative forms of writing there is. Fortunately, creativity is not as ethereal as some might lead you to believe.

There are only two things you need to do to become a better writer: study and write.  The question is: are you studying and writing optimally?  I wrote screenplays for Columbia and Paramount on instinct, and wrote hundreds of animation scripts the same way.  But I’d never really “learned” how to write. I finally decided to get serious about my craft and read all the best-selling screenwriting books.  I learned quite a bit.  But one of the most important things I learned was that WHAT you read is only half of the journey.  HOW to read is the other.  Learn the three R's and become a better screenwriter...

Several of you have asked me for instructions on how to set up Microsoft Word “styles” for script writing.  A style is simply a saved bundle of formatting instructions.  If you are familiar with screenwriting software such as Final Draft or Screenwriter, you know that what they basically do is make it easier to write scripts by automatically formatting script elements, fonts, paragraphs, etc.  If you follow the instructions below you will turn Microsoft Word into a simple but effective screenwriting program.