But that name always intrigued me, and since my story is about the Manchurian, a man who was the inspiration for Fu Manchu, Ming the Merciless, Dr. No, and a host of Asian villains in Western culture—appearing in penny dreadfuls, dime novels, and pulp magazines—I wanted to use Chinese Whispers as the title for my James Bond–style theme song.

Having never written a song before, and not knowing a song bridge from the bridge of my nose, I looked at the lyrics of a couple of James Bond theme songs for inspiration. One was the recent “No Time to Die” by Billie Eilish; the other, the long-ago classic “Goldfinger” by singing legend Shirley Bassey.

I spent about a week on the song. I wanted it to be from the point of view of the Manchurian’s estranged lover, Soong Ma. I wanted the song to not just have cool lyrics. I wanted it to tell her story. Her Chinese Whisper.

I legally registered and licensed my lyrics, so I can share them.

Verse One

They said you were a myth

I knew that was a lie

Chinese whispers in the night

A penny dreadful that must die

I saw a boxer rising

A noble demon who would fight

They said you were a villain

But I knew that you were right

In this first verse, she talks about the mythical incarnation of the Manchurian, who was perceived by the world as a villain. He fought as a pugilist in the infamous Boxer Rebellion.

Pre-Chorus

Eyes of ice, mind of fire

Blood of dragons, heart’s desire

Feel his ire, feel his rage

A dime novel can’t turn the page

In the pre-chorus, “eyes of ice” refer to the genetic aberration of his ice-blue eyes. “Mind of fire” refers to the fact he is one of the most brilliant men ever born. “Blood of dragons” refers to the fact he was a member of the royal family, hidden in an orphanage during the Opium Wars, where his parents died.

Chorus

A Chinese whisper forever lingers

The touch of death at his fingers

Would-be emperors he’ll defy

Immortal boxer never dies

The Manchurian has mastered what martial artists call the “touch of death” or “ghost palm.” He likes to refer to it by its scientific term, commotio cordis, a lethal disruption of the heart rhythm.

Would-be emperors refer to tech billionaires who are trying to now control governments (a little far-fetched, I know).

As a genius with many doctorates to his name, he found a way to genetically rewrite the DNA, prolonging life, leading to one of his many nicknames, “Immortal Boxer.”

Bridge

I was his lantern in the night

Shiny shiny burning bright

Our love was beauty and sorrow

Could we ever have tomorrow

When Soong Ma says she was his lantern in the night, she is referring to the fact that she was a surviving member of the only female sect of pugilists in the Boxer Rebellion, the “Hong Deng Zhao,” or Red Lanterns.

I had so much fun writing this song that I think I’ll try my hand at it again in the near future.

In the meantime, here’s a temp track I’ll use for Chinese Whispers. It’s not as iconic as I want the song to be yet. But when I get back to Europe, I plan to hire a composer and vocalists and redo it, using this track as an example. I really want that emotionally vulnerable Amy Winehouse feel. She was one of a kind and died way before her time. And I’m sure if she was still here she would have ended up recording a theme song for a future James Bond movie.

Let me know what you think of the track. And thanks for listening to me wax philosophical about the artistic process.

It provides the truth about the Hollywood film industry.

Introduction

After having spent over twenty-five years in Hollywood—the first ten as a working stuntman and the subsequent years as a struggling screenwriter—I see an alarming amount of information online about selling a screenplay in Hollywood that contradicts how I know the industry actually works.

These online platforms profit off of dreams and ignorance.

So I want to tell you the truth in the pages of this manual.

The first screenplay I ever wrote was heavily plagiarized by a producer I had given it to read. A year and a half later, it became a film franchise. I hadn’t copyrighted it. The first TV pilot I ever wrote was packaged by one of the three biggest talent agencies in the world. They paired me with an Emmy award-winning showrunner, we pitched it, and it was picked up for development. My attorney had to fight for a creator credit for me on a show I created.

There were some highlights. I sold a script to a large indie company that became an HBO World Premiere movie. Remember those? Of course, my euphoria was short-lived. The company rewrote my script so that it was unrecognizable. And not for the better. When the star of the film, who loved my original script, showed up on set and read the new draft, he refused to perform. After two weeks, his agent changed his mind. He was getting two million after all. So there was that.

I stopped pursuing Hollywood years ago. I left not only L.A. but America. I’ve spent the last six years traipsing across Europe. A self-imposed exile. During the first half of those six years, I worked with a producer in the UK to put together a Hindi action film. She assured me the Indian arms of companies like Amazon and Netflix were easier to deal with. They weren’t. We chased talent, investors, and companies. To no avail. I tried to put together a Hong Kong film with some Southeast Asian producers. Once again, we chased talent, investors, and companies. During that time, I was also hired to write and direct a proof-of-concept for a movie and got to shoot at Manchester Cathedral. Which was pretty cool.

At the end of those first three years, I reflected. Despite having worked extremely hard on these projects, I had absolutely nothing to show for it. It was as bad as taking meetings in Hollywood. So, I moved away from that and focused on novel writing.

I also decided to rethink my approach to filmmaking and mapped out a new plan. Which is what I have been focused on for the past few years. Only I decided this time I was going to try it my way. I wasn’t going to pitch studio hotshots anymore; I also wasn’t going to chase indie investors (which can be just as big a waste of energy). This time around, no gatekeepers.

While regrouping and figuring things out, I wrote the graphic novel The Curse of Monte Cristo, which—to my surprise—was picked up by an uptown Manhattan agent and sold to Andrews McMeel Syndication. It came out April 2025 through Simon & Schuster. I then started my entertainment company Exile Circus. I’m coming out with two novels, Diary of a Girl at the End of the World and Mindbender: From Harlem With Love, at the end of July 2026. I’m currently working on my second graphic novel, The Last Manchurian, and planning an animated film version of it.

I’ve also been quietly watching the recent changes in the film industry, the world, and in emerging technologies. More on that later.

This is an instructional manual that will arm you with practical advice on how to succeed with your screenwriting and filmmaking ambitions. It also contains anecdotal accounts and a fair amount of self-deprecating humor.

To put my money where my mouth is, I’m chronicling my triumphs and failures in real time on Substack and my fledgling YouTube channel.

I guess, win or lose, I’m going to walk the walk.

By reading this manual, you won’t have to make the same mistakes I did.

And if you do decide to attempt Hollywood, the advice in these pages will ensure that you have a better chance of success than I did.

Coming soon!

I knew immediately the deal was bad and that they didn’t expect me to have strong representation.

A friend of mine, who used to be an executive at SyFy Channel, introduced me to his Beverly Hills entertainment attorney to rep the deal.

The executives at the company weren’t too happy to meet my attorney. She had negotiated contracts for the studios.

I also knew they were going to push me out of my project. The lingo they were using was familiar to me: “We’re bringing in a big studio writer to spearhead the project and back you up.”

They were also asking me questions like, “So how much of the story did you use from the public domain novel The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu?” Since the novels, movies, radio programs, etc., were all about the two bumbling British agents who were after him (Fu Manchu would just show up every once in a while to capture and torture them until they could escape), and since no one except me had bothered to give the good doctor an origin story, and since in my script he is an anti-hero, not a villain, there was very little that I had used from the source material.

I knew what they were thinking. If I used the source material and the studio hotshot writer rewrote what I wrote based on it, they could claim he was working from the source material. In true Hollywood fashion, I would end up with a BS “story by” credit and very little money beyond the upfront fee.

To make matters worse, my story—which flipped the script on the racist themes and was all about the beauty of Chinese culture, martial arts, and history, along with the lead roles of the two Asian spies assigned to find Fu Manchu—would be rewritten.

They used terms like making the lead characters more box-office-friendly. What they meant was White. They were going to whitewash my Asian-led script and change the POV from Chinese to White, in true Hollywood fashion.

Anyway, my attorney got me a low six-figure payday. With the negotiation over, the contract (with her agreed-upon changes) went to the company’s legal department for final review.

Having been in this position before and sensing a bad deal, despite needing money, I called my attorney and asked her if she would be angry if I turned down the deal (she had dealt with a lot of nonsense to negotiate it). She said she wouldn’t be and confirmed that, from everything she observed, they were planning to push me out of the project.

She called the production company and told them I was passing.

But I realized something important in all of this: I didn’t need the Fu Manchu IP.

In my screenplay, I now wanted my character, the Manchurian, to be the real-life inspiration for all the stereotypical, racist Asian bogeymen who populated penny dreadfuls, pulp magazines, and comic books from the 1920s through the 1970s of Western history. Characters like Dr. No and Ming the Merciless.

My graphic novel, based on my screenplay, will owe allegiance to no one’s racist IP.

My graphic novel is about the abject racism my character endured, despite his intellect, and echoes the sentiments of Albert Einstein when he left Nazi Germany and came to America, only to witness how badly African Americans were treated and realize that much of Hitler’s doctrine—degrading the Other to a less-than-human status—was based on America’s playbook toward Black Americans.

The Last Manchurian will live.

And he will live on my terms.

I’m not.

If this information helps anyone here on Substack achieve success, I will applaud more loudly than anyone. I’m for the little guy. Hell, I am the little guy. I’ve seen too many dreams lobotomized during my time in the soul-crushing, meat-grinding automaton that is Hollywood. Including my own.

As part of documenting my journey to market my two novels—Mindbender: From Harlem With Love and Diary of a Girl at the End of the World—and create my next graphic novel The Last Manchurian (which I will also be producing as a full-length animated graphic movie), I’m giving people an all-access pass not just to my successes, but also my failures. I’m letting it all hang out.

And if on day one of the release of my books, after all of my marketing efforts, I have zero sales, I’ll let you know that too. Then I’ll head to my favorite watering hole and hoist a beer or ten. The next day I’ll wake up and start my new mad plans to conquer the universe all over again.

But for now, this is my guide to how I formatted the media kits for my books (actually, it’s not much of a guide). And since I don’t really believe in guides and gurus, modify it for whatever works for your taste and talents. Leaning into my writing and filmmaking background, I wanted something less dry and dissertation-like and more visual and cinematic.

Both Mindbender and Diary were screenplays long before they became novels.

In other words, this is the latest episode of “Carlton Gives It All Away for Free.”

The media kit for Diary of a Girl From the End of the World, which I’ve attached for your perusal, edification, and entertainment as a PDF, is more of a pitch deck style than a traditional media kit.

I put in the information I felt fit. I highly recommend using favorite quotes from your novel. That was my favorite part.

I used Canva to craft it (I’m not technical enough for Photoshop). Believe me, if I can use Canva, anyone can.

Okay that’s it.

May the Force be with you.

Live long and prosper.

And may the odds be ever in your favor.

Diary Media Kit

4.03MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

I hated querying agents and publishers. Which is why I created my own imprint.

I hated querying bloggers, book reviewers, and authors to read my books. So I stopped sending out ARCs (although I am looking into hiring someone to do it for me).

Why do I hate querying so much? Because it is extremely time consuming. I’d spend an hour and a half formatting my query and manuscript exactly the way a particularly anal agent wanted it, only to find out they were no longer accepting queries.

If you’ve ever queried before, you know you can spend hours and only get two or three queries out—which would likely never be read by the person you’re sending it to, but probably by their overworked, underpaid assistant.

I started doing the numbers on just how much time I spent doing that.

Time that I could have spent creating.

So I stopped.

I wanted to find organic ways to market where I could still be a creator. A way of marketing where I could use my writing and filmmaking skills.

That led me to documenting my journey toward publishing my two novels Mindbender: From Harlem With Love and Diary of a Girl at the End of the World here on Substack. I also plan to release supplemental materials for my novels in the form of short stories from the worlds these novels inhabit.

It also led me to YouTube, where I could utilize my filmmaking skills in a series of micro-documentaries—a blend of fact and fiction—to showcase the worlds of my novels on my Exile Circus YouTube channel. I’m also very excited about other visual promotional ideas I have in the works.

Are these valid marketing methods? Will they work? I don’t know. I’m a writer.

But I enjoy this much better than querying people to read my novels.

And I’m building out my worlds visually.

I enjoy writing fiction and essays on Substack. It’s my joy. And I feel like I’m connecting with an audience that understands. People who are facing the same challenges as I am.

I enjoy creating my little videos, and with each one I get a little more proficient at it.

And that’s not nothing.

Because, let’s face it, after spending the millions of hours it takes writing a novel, rewriting it multiple times, then editing it over and over again, the last thing I want to do is sit on my computer for countless hours day after day writing unsolicited correspondences to gatekeepers of one sort or another.

I’m at my best when I’m creating.

I think that all authors who are publishing their own work should follow a marketing path that plays to their interests and strengths and lets them continue to be artists—not turn them into marketing executives.

I’ve included the latest episode of my Mindbender Micro-Doc series below.

Many years ago, when I wrote the first draft of my novel, Diary of a Girl at the End of the World, as a screenplay, it was a very different story (with a different title). The protagonist was a little boy, and it was a big, action-filled animated children’s film.

When my Dreamworks producer fell out of the project, the script went where all my unproduced scripts went back then: the screenplay graveyard (i.e., the bottom of my sock drawer).

Years later, after seeing a number of the pre-teen and teen female gymnasts I was training in gymnastics at the time enthusiastically reading The Hunger Games, I picked it up out of curiosity and read it. I immediately saw why the story and protagonist resonated with them so deeply.

Now I had a whole different vision for my children’s film.

Only it would no longer be for children.

And it would no longer be a film.

Set a few weeks into our future, I wanted it to be about a lonely teenage girl finding empowerment through surfing. And I wanted the story to unfold within the pages of her personal journal. Her inner thoughts, hopes, and fears.

And it would be set during the alien invasion and occupation of Earth. Only these aliens had been watching Earth from their distant world for a very long time. In particular, they must have witnessed how Adolf Hitler, many decades earlier, had brought the world to its knees with fascism and authoritarian rule.

In my novel, the aliens empower collaborating humans with shiny new bodies that don’t grow old or wear out. A reward for betraying their race. They place these Shinies in positions of power in the occupied cities. The young are seduced and coerced into joining the Honor Guard—a youth brigade—and holding huge rallies to make subjugation seem like a good thing.

“They’re so much wiser than us. They’re not here as conquerors. But as teachers. And we have so very much to learn.”

But that’s a lie. And to expose that lie and fight back, the protagonist, Noa, finds the final resting place of the robot, Metal Cadet, hoping that if she powers it back up, it can join the resistance against the aliens, like it did in Europe all those long decades ago.

Only she discovers the Metal Cadet isn’t a robot. It’s a vessel. And to resurrect it, she will have to temporarily transfer her life force into its metal husk via the steel tank known as the Changeling.

Noa will have to pilot the Metal Cadet.

Her fight for freedom and resistance to tyranny rule is timely today, all over again.

A network of psychic spies from different countries going up against one another in a dark game of treachery, sex, and patriotism.

That’s the retro world I offer with a vintage Sean Connery’s James Bond vibe.

This series combines my love of spy fiction with my fascination with documentaries.

Why am I doing this?

Because I am an independent writer/filmmaker launching my own imprint, Exile Circus, to bring my creations to the public. I’m also a writer who absolutely hates marketing.

I hate saying buy my book. I’m just one of those people who has an aversion to salesmanship.

So I came up with a way of selling without selling.

I would rather use a series of faux documentaries that blend fact and fiction to reveal the worlds of my two novels—to start out with—Mindbender: From Harlem With Love and Diary of a Girl at the End of the World.

I won’t be mentioning my novels at all in these micro-doc series. I know, it’s a novel approach (pun intended).

I don’t want to sell you my books. I want to transport you into my worlds.

One is an exotic environment of enemy agents with mental acuities.

The other is a teenage landscape of alien occupation, collaboration, and resistance.

My belief is that the people who have an interest in these worlds will have an interest in my micro-doc series and hopefully, later on, my novels.

I want to organically reach the people who like the same things I do.

This form of marketing feeds my artistic soul without compromising my vision of what a writer and artist should be.

The videos will be in the three minute range, so it’s not much of a commitment.

I’d be honored if you’d visit these worlds at least just for a peek.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

I mean NBC is a channel. ABC is a channel. Netflix and Hulu, they’re channels.

But why wouldn’t my Exile Circus YouTube Channel be a channel? They have 2.7 billion monthly active users. 5 billion videos are watched daily.

And no matter where you’re from, that’s a lot of eyeballs.

Netflix—king of the streamers—has 325 million paid subscribers. Their global audience is approaching a billion.

So I’m proud of my little channel. And my minuscule little achievement of launching my first video is groundbreaking to me.

I guess it’s all how you look at it. I looked down on YouTube for so long because I saw so many silly and inane, frivolous videos. But YouTube has also launched the careers of stars, singing sensations, filmmakers. And I’ve watched amazing tutorials there. The most consequential news reporting is now on YouTube. And of course Substack. You know I’d never leave you out, Stack, baby—now can you please give me a shoutout?

So I’m reveling in my little YouTube channel that could. That has no subscribers. And I say that with a twinkle in my eye. Because YouTube is going to allow me to do what I was never ever able to do in Hollywood.

YouTube will allow me to showcase and build the worlds of my fiction. Of my novels. Of my graphic novels. Of my future animation projects. For an audience.

You see, Hollywood and publishing companies always had the audience. You had to get through their gatekeepers to get to the audience. I spent all my time pitching and getting projects into development in LA, only to see them fall out of development several months later.

The truth is, for over twenty years, I made very little in Hollywood. And what was made was deformed beyond recognition.

This makes me think of the monologue from Cyrus in the cult hit film The Warriors: “We got the streets, suckers. Can you dig it?”

Studio Hollywood and the publishing empire had the streets—sole access to the audience. They were the monopoly.

Now everyone has access to an audience, here on Substack, on YouTube, or on any of a number of other platforms.

And I get to make silly little videos.

In the immortal words of a man who was ahead of his time, “Yabba Dabba Doo.”

If you like historical fiction, the Cold War, espionage, or psychic phenomena, check out the first episode of my Mindbender Micro-Doc Series, Psychic Spies: Secret Weapon of the Cold War.

Although the scary movie and series I’m about to mention are also equally excellent dramas, as was the source material for them.

This is a no spoiler zone.

I feel like these were extremely well made projects that actually illuminated the originals. However, they were largely overlooked by the horror audience.

The first one was the 2016 Exorcist TV series, which I was highly skeptical of when I heard they were rebooting the movie as a series. I think my exact words were blasphemy. The 1973 classic film is in my top twenty favorite films of all time. As horrific as the horror scenes were, it was also a compelling drama and character study with incredible acting.

I didn’t even entertain the notion that the series would be anywhere in the realm of the original movie. But when I watched the pilot episode, it was clear that this series was channeling the tone, horror, and drama of the original movie. It was masterly written and executed.

As I watched the series, I never thought it would lead back to the original story. I was happily surprised. I was disappointed in the second season. But I’m a firm believer that some shows just don’t have a second season in them. Maybe as an anthology.

The second horror project I’m going to mention is the prequel The First Omen, which had a wonderfully disturbing movie poster. The original Omen film is a classic of horror and drama. I love period pieces, so the fact that the prequel takes place in 1971 Rome was the lure for me. I saw this in the theaters when I was in Manchester a couple of years ago.

Like I said, it’s a prequel to the original movie. I thought it set up things perfectly—loved the kick-ass ending—and was diligently waiting for the follow-up film, which never came. I figured the prequel franchise would then lead into a reboot of the original classic movie. The First Omen had some terrifying sequences and I enjoyed it thoroughly as I munched on my popcorn, sprinkled with M&Ms. They don’t put butter on popcorn in the UK. They sprinkle it with M&Ms. Weird, but strangely addicting.

These horror vehicles were overlooked. Yet in the past year people were raving over films like Weapons, which, as I watched it in the theater, strongly suspected was a comedy. And not a funny one. I’ve since been told it is not.

My definition of a good horror project is first and foremost an R-rating. The second is horror throughout—good and gory. The third is an original story, direction and acting.

The Exorcist series and The First Omen checked all those boxes.

So what happened?

If you haven’t seen either and you’re looking for real thrills, search them out.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go rewatch The First Omen.

I produced and directed a couple of short films in the waning days of the pandemic, but couldn’t afford a video editor.

So I learned DaVinci Resolve Studio courtesy of YouTube tutorials and edited the shorts myself.

I needed to do pitch decks for some of my film projects. In the past, I always hated pitch decks because the time-honored tradition in Hollywood was that you used visuals from other films in your pitch deck.

I always vehemently hated that.

So I gravitated to AI images as the mood board for my pitch decks. I know some people will not like that I use AI images and say it’s not professional.

However, having lived in LA for over twenty-five years, I’m guessing nearly every screenwriter and producer in Hollywood is currently utilizing this method.

It’s merely to give potential investors or companies an idea of what is in your mind visually. And AI does a much better job of conveying that than images from someone else’s film.

So I learned how to use Midjourney AI and Canva, also courtesy of YouTube tutorials.

I needed to professionally format my two novels that I will be publishing through my own imprint.

So, you guessed it, I learned Affinity Publisher for the manuscript and for the cover art. I used Deepseek AI, which is open-source and free—to help me figure it out, because trust me, I would not have figured it out on my own.

I also used Deepseek AI to put together the full marketing campaigns for my two upcoming novels. And when researching the future colonization of worlds in our solar system and the development of artificial humans—bioroids—I asked Deepseek AI to map out how this would likely be based on the direction of current science and where it’s headed. So, not made-up shit. The research it provided allowed me to craft a science fiction story rooted in fact.

I wrote a graphic novel script, but didn’t want to deal with flaky artists this time around (like I have in the past). So my next learning curve is learning digital art on Procreate. Hopefully, on this one I haven’t bitten off more than I can chew. We’ll see. I’ll be using a combination of YouTube tutorials and Deepseek AI to help me navigate this landscape.

Since I also am planning to animate my graphic novel into a graphic film, I am familiarizing myself with Kling AI as well. Although I will be using voice-over performances from actors—I believe in heartfelt human performances—I will be editing the voices in ElevenLabs.

I will be editing the graphic movie in DaVinci Resolve Studio, which has free updates. Nowadays, every time I do an update there are more AI features on it that can greatly aid the under-financed independent filmmaker.

And I’m sure there are many more learning curves in my future.

Sure, it’s hard getting out of our comfort zones. But I’m excited about what learning will allow me to do as a creator.

I see all of these things as tools that can greatly aid the storytelling process, as long as human creativity is the engine driving it.

A little backstory:

I was hired to write the graphic novel by David Dabel, who had some background in the comic book industry (or at least more than I did). He also offered me a percentage of sales. Once an agent was onboard, I did some rewrites to satisfy her. Later I made adjustments for the publisher who picked it up. It came out in May 2025 to not much fanfare, other than an endorsement from a bestselling writer. I haven’t seen any money from it so far. The agent is currently selling the foreign rights.

Out of curiosity, I googled it today. There was an AI Overview listing a string of solid reviews. Hell, maybe one day I’ll even see a check.

The Curse of Monte Cristo is a 2025 horror graphic novel that reimagines Alexandre Dumas’s classic tale, The Count of Monte Cristo, with a supernatural twist.

Overview of the Reimagining

Written by David Dabel and Carlton Holder and published by Simon & Schuster, this version incorporates the authors’ shared Haitian heritage and shifts the setting to the onset of the Haitian Revolution.

Edmond Dantès: In this version, Dantès is a Black man who has escaped enslavement and become a sailor.

The Demonic Pact: While imprisoned in the Château d’If, his desire for revenge summons Faria, who is reimagined as a demonic entity rather than a human priest.

The Price: Faria offers Dantès the power and wealth needed to destroy his enemies in exchange for his soul.

Historical Setting: The story follows Dantès as he returns to Saint-Domingue (modern-day Haiti) during a time of rebellion against French colonial rule.

Key Themes

Horror and Supernatural: The book features gothic atmosphere, visceral art, and elements of voodoo and dark magic.

Colonial Struggle: The quest for vengeance is reframed as a struggle against the oppressive colonial powers that enslaved Dantès.

Internal Demons: The narrative explores whether Dantès’s deal with the demon is any different from the pact he has made with his own inner rage.

The graphic novel is illustrated by David Lentz and Rodrigo Catraca, featuring a sharp, high-contrast visual style to match its dark themes.

Blockbuster was the local dealer. Our Mister Feel Good, everything’s gonna be all right. Tapping into our veins two to three times a week. Our lives went from VHS to DVD in a flash. The future is now. Then it all fell apart before our very eyes, vaporizing as streaming became all the rage.

But let’s go back for just a moment more.

Remember Friday nights with your pals or your gal—or gals—rummaging through the shelves and aisles of the local Blockbuster to find just the right movies for date night, a beer bash, or a lone wolf movie marathon.

It would be hard to describe to Gen Z and Gen Alpha what that experience was and why it mattered so much. It was visceral. Tactile, emotions and intuition guiding your decisions. And if you chose wrong you had to suffer through a bad movie while friends and loved ones berated you mercilessly for ninety minutes, or more.

Choose wisely, young master.

I believe that movies are the stories that connect us all. Reaching for the last copy of A Better Tomorrow could say a lot about you. Define you. Maybe your soulmate was reaching for it at that exact moment. A life built together on a Blockbuster casual encounter.

Blockbuster was connection.

Going there was tribal, communal. It reminded me of Romero’s original Dawn of the Dead, where zombies were drawn to the one place that held a position of prominence in their lives: the mall—sadly.

Or maybe I’m just waxing poetic, nostalgic for a time that wasn’t all that romantic. Whatever it was, Blockbuster was a snapshot of life in America, a country dominated by pop culture. Pop culture that was fueled by twisted little indie producers with delusions of Oscars dancing in their heads.

Many of the B movies on those shelves would likely never be made today—not by the studios who trot out formulaic, by-the-numbers commercial crap with hundred-million-dollar price tags, nor by the indie producers with their mathematical sales projections.

Can you imagine a writer pitching Surf Nazis Must Die to a studio executive? Or the ultra-violent Exterminator? Deranged visions by deranged filmmakers. But, good or bad, at least they weren’t boring. Or predictable.

When did the whole goddamned world become a bunch of assholes draped around cellphones with the ability to video everything? All the magical memories nowadays are just last year’s Facebook post. A memory that a damn algorithm has to remind you was a good memory.

I reject that premise.

We were happier back then. With our precious VHS tapes and DVD collections.

The biggest joke of all was Blockbuster’s would-be competitor Netflix, which, at the time, had the worst business model in the world: video movies that were mailed to you. Video movies that you had to mail back after watching.

But the joke was on me.

I remember house sitting for an actress friend of mine. She and her husband were going on vacation, and they had this big old dog who liked to do laps in their swimming pool every morning. Basically, I was his lifeguard. Baywatch meets Home Alone meets Marmaduke.

On the way out the door to their holiday, the actress casually said, “We have the new Netflix channel on our TV.”

That night, I checked it out. They had maybe twenty titles in all. I laughed my ass off and thought, Netflix, you’ll never win.

And if you weren’t in, well then, you were out.

I no longer consider myself just a screenwriter. My vision goes so much farther than that now.

I’m a filmmaker. A producer. An author. A graphic novelist. Soon, I’ll be branching out into the roles of fiction podcast producer and playwright.

Many of you here on Substack are writers. Some of you just want a cathartic space to give vent to your inner thoughts. Others aspire to be best-selling authors. Neither is more important than the other.

And now is the perfect time for your voice to finally be heard.

Don’t waste hours of your day taking meetings in Hollywood to pitch your scripts or series (getting meetings isn’t very hard). I had a manager who could get me meetings at the studios. Development execs liked my scripts. But it matters a great deal who brings you in. My manager had enough clout to get me the meetings. He didn’t have enough clout to get me the deals. So all those years I wasted in Hollywood were meaningless. It doesn’t matter if you have projects in development at studios if they never ultimately are produced.

I could have spent that time creating.

I can’t get those years back.

Don’t spend three hours a day querying agents or publishers who will never read past your query letter. I was traditionally published. The publisher did very little marketing. To me that made them irrelevant.

Spend that time creating.

If you’re a writer, invest those hours here on Substack, in a community of readers, writers, and creators.

Create your fiction. Weave your worlds.

And build your audience. The audience is now the engine that gives you a voice. And power over your creations and how they are showcased to the world.

The world, now more than ever, needs unique voices.

Film agents, literary agents, Hollywood producers, and publishers now chase creators who have an audience.

Build your audience, and you won’t have to chase them.

Because they’ll be chasing you.

Note: The image for this article is from a TV series I created. It was packaged by one of the top talent agencies in the world, CAA, and I was paired with an Emmy-winning showrunner. The series was picked up by a studio company that ordered a pilot presentation, which I co-produced and co-directed with the showrunner. My show starred model-turned-actress Talisa Soto and was set to film in Vancouver. In the eleventh hour, the greenlight came down to a choice between my series and a Marvel series. Mine didn't get made.

Releases

The official release date for both my Cold War psychic spy novel, Mindbender: From Harlem with Love, and my young adult science fiction adventure, Diary of a Girl at the End of the World, is July 1st, 2026. ARCs will start going out next week.

In Review

My short story, Glimmer, is in review at one of the top science fiction journals. My short story, The Lives and Times of Ursula Abaddon, is also in review at another of the top science fiction journals. Considering that my previous submissions were rejected fairly quickly, I take the fact that it has been quite a while as a good sign. However, if they are rejected, I’ll be submitting them to other large journals.

My horror short story, As She Was, is being considered by a very popular horror fiction podcast.

In Development

I’m currently writing the six episodes of season one of my horror fiction podcast Rachel@Midnite. I want to produce all the episodes at one time before releasing them so that I can keep to a weekly or bi-weekly schedule.

I have finished the adaptation of the screenplay, The Last Manchurian, into a graphic novel script. It came in at about 238 pages, but I believe it will probably swell to 245 pages in the rewrite. I will be doing revisions and then beginning the panel artwork. Once I am far enough along in the art, I will begin the graphic film. I will hopefully be hiring people for sound, animation, and editing to share chores with.

I currently have an executive producer attached to my live action film, Blood on the Sun. It looks like we also now have a cinematographer who has been involved in award-winning films aboard (she saw the vision of my script) and possibly a name actor for one of the supporting roles. We will be going out to women’s groups and other organizations for financing, as well as the actress I am interested in having play the starring role. I am set to direct.

Upcoming Programming

As I’ve mentioned before, my Exile Circus YouTube Channel will be launching soon. I will be showcasing the visions of my worlds in short videos and pseudo-documentaries, which I call Micro-Docs.

In the Pipeline

• Untitled Children’s fantasy picture book

• Whom Gods Destroy (graphic novel & graphic film)

• Black Madonna (stage play)

• The Lives and Times of Ursula Abaddon (graphic novel & graphic film)

Anyway, this should take me well into 2027, if I don’t pass out from exhaustion or end up in an insane asylum (if I do, let’s hope it’s Arkham—it’d be fun to have supervillain cellmates).

I’m planning to create a Graphic Novel as well as a tandem animated motion picture. A huge undertaking. Both of which will explore the nature of stereotypes, fear of the other, and naked racism. It will not be PG-13.

So, here goes.

I’m resurrecting Doctor Fu Manchu.

Many may have no idea who he is. But the public domain literary fiction character Fu Manchu once stood alongside James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, and Tarzan in terms of popularity and success. Fu Manchu was a multi-million dollar franchise that included books, radio programs, TV series, and movies. At the height of his fame, Fu Manchu was played by film stars Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee, and John Carradine, among others. Notably—to add insult to injury—none of these actors were Asian.

Fu Manchu was the ultimate supervillain; the archetype for all others to come. The franchise was largely abandoned in the late 1960s as issues of racism were being confronted across the Western world in an age of protest. And Fu Manchu faded into obscurity.

That’s where I come in with my jumper cables.

Backstory

A number of years ago, my Hollywood manager requested that I write something that was in the public domain. Hollywood was hot and heavy for those back then. I finally came upon Fu Manchu. I read the 1913 novel. As a person of color, I wanted to take this racist concept and turn it into a celebration of the beauty of Chinese culture and its ancient history.

I had grown up on Hong Kong kung-fu movies. Living in Brooklyn, my parents used to take me and my brothers to Chinatown every weekend. My brothers and I even had our own chopsticks with dragons painted on them. We ate everything including mac & cheese and mashed potatoes with them.

Reimagining Fu Manchu was easy. Out of all the books, radio programs, TV series, and movies no one had ever bothered to write an origin story for him. The stories are always about the two bumbling British agents who are after him. He would just jump out of the shadows every once in a while to capture and torture them.

I steeped my backstory in the Boxer Rebellion, which had always fascinated and horrified me. My character is not a villain; he is a brilliant man who faces great bigotry. My script also celebrated Chinese culture and its rich tradition of martial arts. I ended up using nothing from the novel other than the concept: a Chinese man of amazing intellect who is embroiled in world affairs. Only my character dedicates his genius to trying to create a better world. I do not use the name Fu Manchu (the family of the author owns the trademark and my character is so vastly different). My character is known notoriously as only the Manchurian.

In the end, my script, The Last Manchurian, turned out to only be inspired by Fu Manchu.

For me it was very important that a Chinese director helm it.

So I recommended it to Andy Cheng, a friend of mine. He started out on Jackie Chan’s stunt team. When Jackie came to America, Andy came along with him and became a huge action director in Hollywood. His seven month pregnant wife even stayed with me and my stunt buddies at our sprawling Sherman Oaks home—affectionately nicknamed the Ponderosa, where every day was a party.

Andy loved the script and wanted to direct it. His big shot agent however was too busy to ever read it. So I moved on.

A few years later, a studio company read it and wanted to make it into a 60 million dollar movie (they had a Taiwanese investor willing to put up the budget). During this process, they were trying to completely move me out and move a big studio writer in. I also knew they were going to white wash the other Asian main characters and the diverse cast orbiting them. So I had my entertainment attorney turn down the 150K payday and I moved on again (which was not easy for me to do). But I couldn’t sellout on this.

After writing the graphic novel The Curse of Monte Cristo, which re-imagined the classic as a horror story and the protagonist as a former Haitian slave and seeing it acquired and released by a traditional publishing house, I decided I could do the same with my Manchurian character.

I will try to regularly update you on my progress, which will be slow because I have other projects going and I have to take the occasional paying writing gig (gotta keep the lights on).

I’m hoping along the way I luck into a script sale so I can take the proceeds and hire a small support team to help. But I’m prepared to go it alone.

I’m usually a loner. But I’m proud and nervous to share my journey with all of you, my fellow Substackians (I swear, someday that name will stick).

There were always two things I hated as a screenwriter trying to make it in Hollywood. First: the suits—managers, agents, studio execs. And second: gatekeepers. If you don’t know who the gatekeepers are, please refer back to the first item.

I hated them because many of them are whores, destroying art for the sake of dealmaking and the almighty bottom line.

Now, I was never delusional enough to believe you don’t need money to make a movie. It’s an expensive pursuit. Moviemaking is a marriage between art and commerce. You need financing. I get that. But there used to be a balance. That balance is gone. Commerce has strangled the artistic side, which is why we have so many huge-budget, craptastic movies shoved down our throats—films with little story and lots of FX. Nowadays when I see a Marvel movie, I know the entire third act is going to be nothing but action and cartoonish computer-generated effects.

Hollywood only cares about making a buck. And the publishing industry isn’t far behind. With their profit margins dwindling, studios and publishing houses want to spend less and make more.

Here’s where you come in.

They’re now looking for people with platforms and audiences. If you have ready-to-go content, all the better. And the bigger your platform, the more control you have. Hell, you may decide you don’t even need them.

I no longer consider myself just a screenwriter—though I’ve been a writer-producer for years—or just an author, though I recently released a graphic novel through traditional publishing.

Now, looking at the new landscape, I don’t care about the old system anymore. I don’t want to take meetings at studios. I don’t want to spend a year of my life with a project in development at a studio company, only to see it fall apart in the eleventh hour.

I want to create now!
As a screenwriter.
As a filmmaker.
As an author.

I also want to break all the rules and create hybrid forms of entertainment.

Studio Hollywood and the publishing industry once had a monopoly on the audience. They don’t anymore.

If you love and believe in your script, start shooting. Cameras and equipment are insanely cheap. Shoot small projects. Put them on your YouTube channel and build your audience.

And don’t be a dinosaur by ignoring emerging technologies. When I was offered a publishing contract for my latest novel from an established independent publisher, there was no marketing budget. I asked AI to analyze the contract’s value, given the lack of marketing support. AI confirmed it offered little unless I just wanted a book printed. I then developed a four-month marketing plan using AI—and, brother, did I learn a lot in the process.

AI also helped me map out a workflow to take the panel art that I will illustrate and animate it through AI generation as my shotlist. I’ll edit it into a motion picture—which will still be an arduous task and take over a year. I can then copyright my graphic novel and film and sell them.

Not to mention, every time I update my editing system, it includes more AI features that make things cheaper and easier for indie filmmakers who are a one-person band. Like me.

Authors can build their audience right here on Substack. I’m one of those people who doesn’t give a damn about paid subscriptions. I care about finding the audience for my worlds—the audience I know is out there.

Devise a game plan based on your interests.

Since I’m a filmmaker and can edit, I’m going to straddle Substack and YouTube to build my worlds. On Exile Circus Substack, through my fiction, personal essays, and an upcoming podcast. On my Exile Circus YouTube Channel—launching soon—through short videos using AI-animated images as a mood board to show everyone what it is I actually see in my head. As scary a thought as that is.

Your passion may be poetry, short stories, or horror anthologies. Create hybrid forms of entertainment no one has ever dreamed of before. There are no rules. Not anymore.

You no longer have to wait for a greenlight.
You are the greenlight.

Greenlight: Go.

All the children on their first field trip off-world were giddy with excitement. Earth, the marvelous Blue Marble. Except it wasn’t blue anymore. It was kind of a turd-ish dirty brown and murky gray-green mucus color—the kind of snot you have on your deathbed—and chalky, like the ash on the tip of a cigarette that’s just about to topple. As a matter of fact, all the copious ruins of the corpse-buildings looked like they were going to turn to cinder and magically sparkle away at any given moment. Smoke still rose in places, even after all this time.

That’s what caught Obolutadinanda’s attention the most. He was an eight-year-old boy from Proxima Centauri b, an exoplanet 4.24 light-years away, orbiting Proxima Centauri, which was a red dwarf. Obolutadinanda had tentacles in addition to his legs and arms, was purple with black spots, and had a large afro of curly red exo-membrane—Afros were currently all the rage with the young these days. All of Obolutadinanda’s proctors agreed he had an excellent mind and the empathy to wield it in the just cause of the Utopian Galaxy where all the worlds have come together to commune and learn from one another; to experience this thing called life.

Mankind had been the unruly exception.

As Obolutadinanda stood on the viewing deck with his classmates, they marveled at the dead, decadent planet.

The proctor lectured, “There was a moment in time when mankind stood on the precipice of near grandeur but it lost its way in a multitude of instances, until it finally became the smoldering cinder before you. Earth is a cautionary tale to the rest of the galaxy and all its many civilizations. We let it remain, as a museum of regret, so that we never forget.”

Obolutadinanda raised his hand and asked, “Was there anything at all that survived them?”

“One,” the proctor said, raising a hand. “The works of a writer named Carlton Kenneth Holder, who lived in total obscurity and died in abject poverty. All of his scripts, plays, and novels were on a laptop. It was clutched in his irradiated skeletal hands. Written on the wall next to him—I believe in his blood—was the chilly lament, You’ll have to pry these stories from my cold, dead hands. Which the recovery team did. His bizarre fiction inspired artists and writers a hundred worlds over.”

Obolutadinanda raised a hand and asked, “What’s a laptop?”

“It was a physical manifestation of a computer.”

“They didn’t have neuro-computers?”

“No.”

“If he was such a good writer, why was he not celebrated in his life?”

“Because Carlton Kenneth Holder was a prick.”

“Weren’t all humans?”

“He was a particularly large prick.”

Obolutadinanda thought for a moment and asked one last question, “What was the ultimate reason for the demise of Earth?”

“There was no one reason, but academics have narrowed it down to two distinct phenomena: social media and reality TV.”

Obolutadinanda pondered this for nearly a minute before finally saying, “Humans sure were stupid. Can we go for ice cream now?”

The types of projects you won’t see in the mainstream.

I decided to shift the focus of my entertainment company. I was going to throw most of my money (I’m dumb that way) into a micro-budget horror film I was planning to shoot in late spring in the South of France. Instead, I’m going to focus on adapting my scripts into graphic novels and animated full-length motion pictures.

I’m doing this because I love my projects too much to let them languish unborn any longer.

I haven’t drawn in a very long time, so hopefully my art chops will be up to the task. Wow, that’s scary. Am I finally taking on more than I can handle? Nah, my ego’s too big to think that.

These won’t be your typical GNs and animated films. They will be adult. The subject matter may surprise some.

The more genre-driven projects will be submitted to European film festivals that cater to those audiences.

For my more important projects, like Blood on the Sun—which deals with the ongoing abduction and murder of Indigenous women—and Mindbender—which deals with racism in America—I will focus on more dramatic festivals.

I have twelve fully developed projects—at least four of them were in development at Hollywood studio companies—and I will be going down the list, with plans to direct and produce those films as live-action movies later on.

I will be branding the worlds of my stories through my upcoming Exile Circus YouTube Channel.

Stay tuned.

Montauk is a real place I like to call the East Coast’s Area 51. Often referred to as “The Montauk Project,” conspiracy theories allege that at Camp Hero—the former Montauk Air Force Station—the government conducted experiments in psychological warfare and exotic research, including time travel.

Hearing Montauk mentioned in the episode reminded me of something I’d nearly forgotten: Stranger Things wasn’t originally called Stranger Things. Its original name was Montauk. With this nod, the Duffer Brothers, the series creators, brought the story full circle.

This also took me back about eleven years. My manager at the time would often send me spec scripts and pitches for series that had sold. A “spec” is a script a writer writes on speculation, hoping to sell it. For a series, a writer might create a treatment—a pitch document or “bible” outlining story, character, and season(s)—often accompanied by a written pilot episode.

The writer’s representatives would set up meetings, and the writers would pitch their projects to studios. Their job was to sell their vision in the room. The execs would review the written material if they liked the pitch.

My manager sent me a treatment for Montauk that had just sold to Netflix. In those days, treatments were written documents often supplemented with images from tonally similar hit films, giving vision-challenged executives a glimpse of the writers’ intent. Today, people use the slicker pitch decks.

The series was originally planned as a standalone, one-season miniseries. No one had an inkling of the monster hit it would become. Once it succeeded, of course, everything changed.

This reminds me of another Netflix series, Thirteen Reasons Why. I thought its first season was beautifully written and executed, bringing the story to a full conclusion. But once a movie or series becomes a hit, executives inevitably want sequels or more seasons (I never thought the movie Lethal Weapon should have had a sequel. The main character came to terms with his wife’s death and was no longer suicidal). Some stories aren’t meant to continue. I was surprised when season two of Thirteen Reasons Why was announced. I watched three or four episodes before stopping; it was ruining the first season by retroactively adding storylines that altered how you perceived the characters.

Stranger Things, however, was a series that could have multiple seasons. The only difficult factor for Netflix was how fast the child actors grew up. If you watch the last episode and then revisit the very first, the kids look like babies—at least to me.

In the original pitch document, the Duffer Brothers wrote: “Even though Montauk is designed as a standalone eight-hour tale, the story can continue in subsequent installments.” As savvy Hollywood writers, they knew to leave the door open. They envisioned any future storylines in a very Stephen King, It-esque manner: “The hypothetical sequel will take place in the same town, ten years later in the summer of 1990.”

The opening page of the pitch document states: “Emotional, cinematic, and rooted in character, Montauk is a love letter to the golden age of Steven Spielberg and Stephen King—a marriage of human drama and supernatural fear.”

The concept of unfolding the story like chapters of a book was kept. During development, however, the setting was moved from Montauk to the fictional town of Hawkins, necessitating a new title. Stranger Things is a pretty damn good title.

This brings to mind the movie Final Destination. An interesting piece of trivia is that it was originally written as an episode of The X-Files (you can now rewatch it imagining the two FBI agents as Mulder and Scully). The proposed episode was titled Flight 180, but I think Final Destination was a perfect title. It was fitting that actor Tony Todd was able to appear in the last installment, Bloodlines, before his death. He has left a great legacy in the horror genre (Candy Man, The Crow and more).

The original premise of Stranger Things was set in the fall of 1980, an era that remained central to the series. In Hollywood, there’s often a push to set everything in the present day, but I believe the show’s nostalgic element was a key factor in its success. The creators also aimed for an iconic score, which they achieved. As stated in the document: “Most of the music will be original, which we imagine as a cinematic, eerie, modern synth sound, inspired by classic early John Carpenter scores like The Thing and The Fog.”

I agree. Who wouldn’t want that? Though they omitted the most iconic of all: Halloween.

And for those who thought Will Byers being gay came out of left field, the original pitch document describes him thus: “WILL BYERS, twelve, is a sweet, sensitive kid with sexual identity issues.” In the series’ first episode, it’s mentioned that his absentee father, Lonnie, called Will “queer.”

The reference images in the pitch document included stills from: E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Camp Hero in Montauk, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Altered States, Poltergeist, Hellraiser, Stand by Me, Firestarter, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Jaws.

The most obvious inspirations were Stephen King’s It and Firestarter.

Something tells me we have not seen the last of Stranger Things. Hollywood never gives up a franchise it can still milk for more money.

It may take a while, but never say die.

They’ve been trying to get a new Buffy the Vampire Slayer project off the ground forever. I hear now it’s coming. Although actress Sarah Michelle Gellar says it’s not a sequel or reboot. I guess that only leaves spin-off.

I vote for a Firefly reboot. I’ve got my brown coat in the closet.

Sometimes reboots, sequels, and spin-offs are a good thing. Sometimes they’re a bad thing. Take The Walking Dead. I loved The Walking Dead, but eventually it jumped the shark—that saying comes from the show, Happy Days. It’s when a series has been on so long they’ve run out of ideas. They had Fonzie jump a shark on his motorcycle.

I liked Fear of the Walking Dead. I’m enjoying Dead City. I did not like Darryl Dixon (what the hell is a redneck doing in France?), and I hated The Ones Who Live.

However I believe there are more stories that can be told in the Stranger Things universe. Time will tell.

This advice is coming from someone who pitched scripts to Hollywood for years, so this advice is slanted more toward the film industry, although I believe it can also apply to authors hawking their novels as well.

I wrote some screenplays. I got a manager.

I thought, great, all I have to do now is let my manager submit them and wait for the offers to waltz in. Oh, Carlton, you naive foolish man.

“It doesn’t work that way, Carlton. I have to set up a meeting with the development people at a studio company. We go in. You pitch them. If they like the pitch, they’ll read the script,” my manager—who will remain nameless, even though his name is Tarik—said.

“Why?”

“‘Cause that’s just the way the industry works.”

I later put two and two together. The journey to having a film made is a long and exhaustive process that takes years and requires a lot of people. Also a lot of cash. And a lot of dealing with the people involved. And the writer is at the heart of it all. They don’t want to read a script, fall in love with it, negotiate the deal, and then meet with the screenwriter only to realize he’s a complete and utter douche—even worse if it’s a TV series. If the show is a hit, you have to deal with that a-hole for possibly seven or eight seasons (i.e, years). And that’s the way it is, ladies and gentlemen.

Quick Note: that was old Hollywood. Today an executive won’t read anything unless it’s coming from a writer who has already had a studio script sale. I’ve been personally told that on numerous occasions in Hollywood.

People never believe me when I tell them that. But that is the reality of today’s Hollywood. Gone are the days when a famous producer agrees to read his favorite bartender’s script on a whim, falls in love with it and… the rest is history. Those maverick producers trusted their gut. Producers today just crunch the numbers… then champion their sister’s deadbeat husband’s crappy script to get her off his back and her hubby off the couch.

The Pitch

My manager was fresh out of the ICM mailroom. He decided to forego the agency route and hang out a manager shingle. Many of the other mailroom jockeys were now—you guessed it—development people at studios and studio companies. So he could get me meetings at all the biggies.

My manager set up the meetings.

And I sucked. Saying I bombed would be a colossal understatement.

I was horrible at pitching. I was so in love with my stories that I went into minute detail after minute detail. The execs would get lost; their eyes would glaze over; and on a few occasions, I saw a hint of spittle running down the edge of their mouths; once I heard a snore.

Suffice to say, we never made it to the script reading stage.

Another Quick Note: I hated public speaking in school. I’m introverted. That’s why I got into a sport like gymnastics. That’s why I became a stuntman. That’s one hundred percent why I became a writer. Lone wolf, lone writer.

I wanted my words on the page to do the talking (I didn’t realize what a strange thing this was to say until I typed it). I bet Hemingway never had to do any friggin’ pitch meetings.

Fortunately, I ran into a lady who was brand manager for Pokemon, the Gene Roddenberry estate (so basically Star Trek) and other franchises. She also will remain nameless. Although her name is Cindy.

Okay, we’re getting to the heart of this essay cleverly disguised as a help manual.

Cindy said something so simple that I never ever forgot it. She said, “Carlton, you have to pitch studio executives like you’re pitching a fifth grader.”

Woah.

“The broad strokes, bullet points. Keep it short and simple, your initial pitch should be ten to fifteen minutes the most. Then let them ask you questions. That’s where all your detail comes out. That’s where you show them you know your world.”

And I’ll be a sonuvagun. It worked.

I walked into meetings, bubbling with an enthusiasm and devotion for my scripts that radiated out. I’m one hundred percent sure I sounded like a geek. Have you ever heard Tarantino discuss his films? Total nerdsville. But this nerdy energy and excitement draws you in. It also translates to millions of nerd butts in the seats.

A lot of my scripts were world-building sci-fi, horror, and fantasy. I had scripts, I had treatments, I had TV Bibles. I knew my worlds inside and out. So I couldn’t wait for the Q&A where they tried to punch blackholes in my universes.

Here’s a common TV question that comes at you. Every time I pitched a series, an exec would ask me, “So… you probably don’t know, but what happens in episode thirteen?” or “What happens in season three?” Oh, but I did know. You should have seen the looks on their faces.

You might ask, so, Carlton, what happens when you get something into development?

Well, that’s when the knives come out. I’ll cover that in another essay in the near future. It’ll be titled: When Winning is Sometimes Losing.

Closing Statement

Anyway, for screenwriters and authors alike, brevity is king. Set up your world. Introduce your characters. Toss in the dilemmas and let it percolate.