Awesome!

Thank you so much for "The Quest" Scott! Having read every Story Concept post you made during ACT I of "The Quest" - that has just concluded last night - I must say...I feel like I have already had a free course with you! Thinking internationally (Brazil, Russia, India, China) was truly enlightening. Also, just forcing myself to distill my story ideas into 1 sentence containing: Protagonist, Goal, and Nemesis really made me appreciate the benefit of a concise, clear storyline. Sure, my stories make sense to me, but I am not going to be the one spending millions to make them, market them and purchase all the box office tickets to recoup my own investment lol. If my loglines can't EXPLAIN and SELL my story ideas -clearly - are they worth writing? Thanks for the wisdom brother! Your good karma points multiply with your every post!

Wow. I guess-timated you'd get about a thousand loglines in total. That's some serious competition. Allow me to send some serious logline- reading juju your way - and a virtual bottle of Scotch for Producer Scott, of course....

I thought 1500 plus. But over 3500? That's just insane.

Wow, Scott! I just want to thank you for all the effort you put into this blog. I think I read that you don't get paid for this, right? Grace to you. Thanks again!

Like micah said, you are unbelievably generous. Thank you.

And it is true. It's been forcing me to be more structured in my preps. And more. Working on my synopses now. Thanks much.

Micah, it's true. I don't make a dime off this blog. But I take a spiritual view of life. I love movies, I love stories, I love screenwriting, and I believe in the value of putting good energy out into the universe. I'll admit, there are times when I think I'm crazy to be posting on average six items per day, every day now for 49 months. But then I think of all the great people I've met through the blog. I get emails every week from writers who have benefited from what transpires here. At least a dozen people who were outsiders then sold spec scripts and are currently working as professional screenwriters have contacted me to let me know how helpful GITS has been to them both before and after their big sales. And perhaps most interestingly, a little over a year ago, I checked my email to see a note from Franklin Leonard who as it turns out was a fan of the site. After several lengthy conversations and email exchanges in which we determined shared mutual interests about movies, GITS became the official screenwriting blog of the Black List, a brand I consider to be THE most important one in terms of screenwriting in Hollywood. It's all part of an attitude I have: The spirit of the spec. [In fact, that reminds me: I should run that series again.] At the core of the spirit of the spec is creating something and putting it out there. Time and time again I've done that in my life. Many times nothing came of it. But some times, interesting and wonderful things have resulted. So let's look at this idea of "Go Into The Story: The Quest." There's hardly anything about it that makes any sense from a purely business or logical standpoint, at least that I can see. But when I hit on the idea, I just KNEW I needed to try it. Offer up to 4 people to take a 24-week workshop with me as their mentor -- for free. Part of it is I am hugely passionate about the character-based approach to screenwriting I have developed over the years. The more I dig into it, the more I teach it, the more excited I become about it. I'm so excited about The Quest workshop that I created, I'm excited to share it with people. But it goes well beyond that. I like working with writers, I like working on stories. This idea for the free Quest workshops springs from that as well. You know, I've never stopped to figure out the time I will be committing to the writers during those 6 months. Let me doodle with some numbers now. During Core, we'll have a 60-90 minute teleconference every week. Online forum Q&As will probably take 1-2 hours of my time per week. Feedback on writing exercises: 4 hours per week. Reviewing participants' journal entries and prepping weekly GITS 'reality' posts: 1-2 hours per week. So 7-9 hours per week for 8 weeks. Then we move into Prep where the writers will be breaking a story from concept to outline and that will be more time consuming. Weekly teleconference: 2 hours. Forum Q&As: 1-2 hours. GITS 'reality' posts: 1-2 hours. But the real kicker is the feedback on writing assignments. I spend a lot of time and effort analyzing this type of material. With 4 participants, I'd say 8-10 hours per week. That's 12-15 hours per week for 6 weeks. Then Pages where the writers will be producing 10-15 script pages per week. Weekly teleconference: 2 hours. Forum Q&As: 1-2 hours. GITS 'reality' posts: 1-2 hours. Feedback: 10-12 hours per week for 10 weeks. That's 14-18 hours per week for 10 weeks. So some possible totals: Core: 56-72 hours. Prep: 72-90 hours. Pages: 140-180 hours. Total: 278-342 hours. That's the equivalent of 11.5-14.25 solid days of my life in a six-month period devoted to the four participants in The Quest. For zero income and the only potential tangible benefit being if I go on to set up a project as a producer. But you know what? Even with those numbers, it's still worth a shot. First off, those four participants will have the screenwriting educational experience of a lifetime. I truly believe that. And what if what they learn results in them going on to write one or more great scripts? Don't we all want to see better movies? Finally after years of trying to figure out an alternate way for outsiders into Hollywood, this could be a humble little path that works. That is if "The Quest" works, I could see doing this every 6 months. Of course, the whole thing could crash and burn, an exercise in futility. That goes with the territory when you make decisions according to the spirit of the spec. But what have I lost? 14 days spent reading stories, talking about stories, analyzing stories, doing something I love. And the upside is significant. So circling back to your original point, no, I make no money from running GITS. But like "The Quest," I feel I'm doing something good and positive for the online screenwriting community. We'll see how it all turns out.

If that's not passion, I don't know what that is. And believe you me, although none of my projects have gone off the ground properly yet, whatever happens in my future career, I can say right now that without your blog, Scott, and your generosity, it wouldn't have happened. Right, now I'll say that again when I've actually sold something, which I will, one day, when I have a good enough script. :D

Scott - Just thanks for this. Thanks.

Indeed, I second everything that has been said here - you're a a good man, Scott Myers. On a slightly different note, given the fact that it is of vital importance to have a great high concept (if your intention is to break into main stream Hollywood, that is), do you think you'll create a course that caters to this very point? Obviously, we've all just undergone a free version of that course, but I was wondering if you had thought about adding it to your screen writing master class curriculum. I imagine it would be insanely popular. I know you already have a story summaries course, but I feel a course that concentrates solely on high concepts would be a good idea,

Just fantastic work you are putting in. Incredibly generous and helpful. What comes around, goes around! Many thanks! Nikolai

Have you thought about how you'd approach similar loglines? Closing on 4K, it's bound to happen.

That has come up even in this first batch. If they are ideas I'm not interested in pursuing, I note it and see how many others come in. Is there a trend? Does this represent anything interesting? But if I am interested in the concepts, it creates an issue. I don't think there's a feasible way I could work with both writers on their projects separately. Nor could I choose one and not the other because that wouldn't be fair. One thought would be to see if they would be amenable to working together as partners, but given the fact they wouldn't have known each other, that seems like an awful longshot because the chemistry might not be there. So unfortunately, unless I can think of some other approach, I would probably have to pass on them, even if they're great ideas, contact them individually, tell them I think they have a strong commercial concept, encourage them to write the hell out of their scripts, and wish them the best. If there are any strategists out there who have another viable alternative, please let me know.

Scott, I feel like I already have a huge leg up on understanding the importance and significance of creating high story concepts. This blog (and I only just discovered it several months ago) has in very real and detailed ways contributed to my growth and maturation as a screenwriter. The depth and variety of the posts keep me engaged and inspired on a daily basis. That's no small thing. The daily GITS email is probably the number one email that I look forward to receiving and reading on a daily basis. First one I open and read in the morning - problem is, though, most of what's in there I've already read on the blog the day before!!! Now, how to stop doing that!!?? :-) Oh, and I totally agree with the new extended mantra. Though I would place "Think Concepts" first in the line. Think Concepts. Read Scripts. Watch Movies. Write Pages. Best, Jason

Wow, Sean, that is such an obvious idea, and one that had not occurred to me. I definitely will add that to the curriculum as a Craft course. It would build off the Core II: Concept course with very specific techniques and practices based on principles laid out in Core. It's odd though, Sean, I'm not sure how wildly popular it would be. I was frankly rather shocked by the number of comments I received from people who said how much of an eye-opener this experience was to them, about needing to raise their game, so to speak, when it came to generating and working on story concepts. To me I guess that's such an obvious point: Work with the absolute best story concept possible. But evidently that is not a given for some, if not many aspiring screenwriters. And that would explain why comments from scripts readers, like the ones we had in the recent Twitter chat with Amanda P, Nate Winslow and Bitter Script Reader about a common problem being poor concepts at the root of the story. I think the main reason the importance of story concept and really pushing ourselves to come up with great ones was because I stressed it so much every day. And perhaps the presence of "Producer Scott" to act as Hard-Ass In Chief to provide an edge to the conversation. But your point is certainly valid: There needs to be some sort of formal training in dealing with story concepts and so a 1-week intensive could be just the trick. Great idea. I'll go through my class calendar and see if I can fit it in in 2012 [if you go here, you can see I'm already booked up pretty much through December]. But if I plan to offer "Go Into The Story: The Quest" again, that is solicit submissions for up to 4 writers to do the 24-week Quest workshop for free, I'd probably do what we just did in terms of submission process in December to start with the writers in January. So maybe do a Story Idea course in October to help people jump-start their story-generation process. Hm. You've got me thinking. Thanks, Sean!

I assume a writing sample should help determine which one 'clicks' with you more. Though this approach is only a viable tiebreaker for a small quantity.

There are always several competing takes on any given concept floating around in this town. As a producer, it's your job to pick the writer you think has the best shot at cracking the story, rather than turn your back on the concept altogether. The Wachowskis weren't the only ones who came up with the basic premise of "ordinary man finds out his world is only a computer simulation, and joins a group of resistance fighters to free others who are caught in the same virtual prison". But they had the best take. So Joel Silver picked them instead of the fifty or so other writers who were wandering around on the same patch of mental real estate. My suggestions would be to look at the personal statements and writing samples of writers with similar concepts. If one strikes you as the more likely candidate to nail the story, pick him / her. If neither looks like they've got the chops, then so be it. And since you have copies of all submitted loglines in your inbox, it'll be easy to prove that whoever was chosen didn't rip anybody off.

I definitely needed this. I've sort of let story concepts float into my mind before, and once they did I fleshed them out. You had me exercise the brain-muscle for story concept, and now I see why it's just as important as exercising the brain-muscle for character development (by developing dozens or hundreds of characters for practice) or dialogue (which I need to go do right now). I tried to find some way to empathize with your reading through 4000 loglines, and realized that we've all spent the last 2 weeks reading loglines per your instructions. Did my head ever hurt after running through a thousand loglines! Your generosity and commitment is amazing. Another area of brain muscle development I just noticed came through the end of William Goldman's book. He took a short film screenplay to people of a variety of industry roles, and got many different critical views. Director, art director, cinematographer, composer - if we can develop the ability to analyze our screenplays from the point of view of each component of film making, we become super screenwriters.