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The Writer’s Room

The Writer’s Room is a home for practical, skeptical, and occasionally amused looks at the business of getting screenwriting work noticed.

Topics may include online pitch services, producer-response platforms, screenwriting courses, coverage offers, free-book offers, marketing claims, and the strange little ecosystem built around writers’ hopes.

Some pieces will be reviews. Some will be experiments. Some will be cautionary notes. All of them will try to be fair, specific, and useful to writers deciding where to spend their time, money, and creative energy.

Who’s Poking Around Here?

I’m Randall R. Reese, Randy to my friends, a novelist, screenwriter and longtime improv performer/teacher with more than 30 years in comedy and storytelling.

I’m not a manager, agent, studio executive, or Hollywood guru, which is fortunate because I look terrible in mysterious sunglasses. I’m also not writing this from the mountaintop as someone who has cracked the code, sold a dozen specs, and now wishes to bless the villagers with wisdom.

I haven’t sold a screenplay. I haven’t had one optioned. I do have one produced movie with a writing credit, but it’s the kind of credit I mention only when legally forced or after someone has bought me enough coffee. Let’s just say the movie exists, the check cleared, and we all survived.

So no, The Writer’s Room is not coming from someone claiming to have the secret handshake. It’s coming from someone who has been navigating these waters for a long time, writing scripts, pitching projects, taking notes, trying platforms, asking questions, watching promises come and go, and learning how much of the screenwriting business is built around access, hope, and carefully worded sales pages.

The seed of this project came from a familiar writer’s lament: breaking into this business is hard. Maddeningly hard. Especially when you believe you have the talent, the scripts, the work ethic, and possibly too many open browser tabs, but you are still not a known quantity to the people who can actually move a project forward.

Meanwhile, writers like me get bombarded daily with ads, courses, pitch platforms, coverage offers, free books, webinars, contests, and “producer response” promises. Some may be useful. Some may be overhyped. Some may be expensive noise wearing a nice hat.

So The Writer’s Room is where I take a fair, skeptical, and occasionally amused look at the products, services, and promises aimed at screenwriters trying to get noticed. I’ll give credit where it’s due, ask annoying questions when needed, and when something smells like an obvious scam, I won’t pretend it’s potpourri.

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Start here: The Writer’s Room Begins: Hype, Hope, and Hard Lessons for Screenwriters

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