I've been with my wife for over a decade; we have three beautiful children and have worked hard to stay happily married. And anyone in a long-term relationship knows that maintaining a "happy" marriage is no easy task. But my wife is not the only marriage I strive to preserve. I also have a writing partner. I didn't always have a professional marriage, though. When I was first starting out as a screenwriter, my first three scripts were mine and mine alone. But then came Greg, who pitched me an idea for a biopic about Rollen Stewart, the infamous Rainbow Man, known for…

The first act is very simply: the beginning of your story. Usually the story begins at the moment when the first character faces the difficulty that he or she has to solve, and it better be a clear difficulty, and he better realize that he must do something. Dramatic form means action, and action brings tension. So the awareness of the tension, and the clarification of what the nature of your tension is, helps to build the whole script. ACT ONE: ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS TONE: Very quickly you want to establish the tone of the script: is it a serious film, a comedy, a…