Christina Hamlett's Blog
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Jul.25.2012
By the summer of 1978, I had already launched the first season of my touring repertory company, The Hamlett Players. Our excerpts from classic plays were met with mixed reviews; we did a nice job with the material, the audience said, but it was disconcerting to only see 15 minutes of a story and...
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Jan.26.2012
Just when I thought I had truly read it all, a client submitted a "new" screenplay in which s/he copied and pasted the entire text of a Shakespearean play into Final Draft, gave it a new title and claimed authorship on the front cover.
I diplomatically explained that people who love Shakespeare...
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Feb.02.2011
When I was in first grade at Riverside Elementary there was a Friday morning tradition called “Show and Tell” in which everyone was supposed to bring in something interesting to talk about. This ran the gamut from toys and puppets to frogs, ant farms and weird looking rocks from the backyard, many...
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Feb.02.2011
When I was in first grade, it was a Friday morning tradition at Riverside Elementary to participate in "Show and Tell", an exercise in confidence-building and public speaking. My classmates typically brought items such as toys, frogs, puppets, ant farms and even weird-looking rocks they...
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Mar.28.2010
The arrival of Daylight Savings Time early this year heralds the approach of a long stretch of summer for you to finally get cracking on that screenplay you’ve been wanting to write.
There’s only one obstacle: Where to find a fresh story to whet the appetite of prospective producers and appease...
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Mar.27.2010
Made you look, didn’t I? The power of a strong hook has been fueling marketing schemes for years, not the least of which involve the glamour and glitz of writing scripts for the movies.
The illusion that movies look so easy and effortless when one is seated in a darkened theater belies the reality...
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Mar.26.2010
To a student’s ears, there is probably no phrase more welcome than the words “open book test”. The catch, however, is that an open book can be next to useless if you don’t know which chapter holds the answer or how to interpret and apply that answer to a fresh problem. For writers on a quest,...
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Mar.25.2010
People decide to write books for a lot of different reasons. Some perceive it as a glamorous profession that inspires awe. Some see it as a chance to impart cautionary advice based on their experiences. Some are seduced by the number of “O’s” they anticipate will be on their first check. Some view...
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Mar.24.2010
There’s something about screenwriters that they just can’t leave well enough alone in providing direction to actors. Instead of a character simply saying a line, there seems to be an unwritten rule that they have to deliver the line with lots of embellishment. (This is not unlike, I've...
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Mar.23.2010
Villainy can take a wide variety of menacing forms. As I discovered in a recent client’s screenplay, this even includes mutant lamprey eels.
Hey, why not? If rats, bats, radioactive ants, sharks, raptors, and anacondas can have their spin in the spotlight, maybe the eel coalition decided to get...
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Mar.23.2010
Wally had found me - as many clients do - by reading screenwriting magazines and trolling the Internet. With full throttle enthusiasm, he wanted to engage my consulting services a few years ago to mentor him through his Epic.
Yes, you read that right. Epic. As in Huge. Wally was fixated on Lewis...
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About Christina
Long before I started school, I was casting my puppets, stuffed animals and Barbie dolls - and supplying all the voices - in plays performed beneath the canopy of my bed. It's, thus, probably little wonder that I not only grew up to be a writer but spent a...