Table Reads with Bonnie: Sharpen Your Craft with a Live Reading + Feedback

Ready to bring your pages off the page? Bring up to 5 screenplay pages or 3 prose/memoir pages for an interactive live reading! We’ll assign roles on the spot, read your script out loud, and dive into actionable notes from Bonnie and the group to polish your… Read more

Every year, writers hear predictions about what publishers, producers, and audiences will want next. Some trends turn into lasting shifts, while others disappear before a manuscript makes it through revisions. As we head toward 2027, the interesting development is how much the book and screen markets have in common. Audiences are…

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Here are the first 5 pages of the new version (version 3) of the Novapraxii Pilot. It consists of the new cold open (3 pages) and the first 2 pages of the following scene in Act 1. Here it is: https://catalyst.voyagemedia.com/?attachment=13775&document_type=document&download_document_file=1&document_file=1245

Hey Pro Members @Reset, @Jack, @lynnjeffery, @tanyagruhl, @sharonwaring, @emmawalsh, and @brockmagic! We missed you at the last workshop! Feel free to jump in for this one if the timing works for you. Hope writing has been going great!

Paging our Scene Read participants @Fallon, @Sandy, @robertmit2, @Grogen, and @oshea1! Fresh off Michael’s session, this is the perfect next step to bring those updated pages back to the mic. Jump in, grab a slot, and let’s keep building that draft!

Thanks for expanding on the kinds of Want that can keep a protagonist proactive, Michael.

One of the things that came up during my most recent scene-read webinar was the issue of passive protagonists. Not necessarily protagonists who are passive over the course of an entire movie or television episode, but characters who become strangely inactive in individual scenes, while the supporting characters do all the work around them. It’s…

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Just a reminder that there is a Band group open to join to share ideas/scripts with us and get feedback.
Just message me if you want to join!

Apologies for my absence, Michael and group. I’ve slept clean through 2 alarms 😞 and don’t want to interrupt so late in proceedings. 👋

Yes, I was able to download your 5-pager, Jackie!

I love this philosophy.
Hadn’t heard the term, ‘shoe leather’, and it seems a great one to remember here.
NCIS: Sydney does this well, fitting random Australiana into the dialogue or scenery during boring bin searches or as lulling banter between high drama events.

A fascinating and enriching read, Bonnie. Thanks!

Thanks for the inspiration and tips Dan!

Gold! Thank you Bonnie!

Hi, Michael
I’m not ready to share a scene update yet, sorry. Want to get my story’s overview clearer in my mind first.
But trying to get ready for this sparked a new idea of using a dialogue-heavy short story in a different genre for practising techniques with.
https://catalyst.voyagemedia.com/projects/book-a-bully/admin/edit-details/

If you…

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Jackie here — I think I have a PDF made but now I’m getting the notification that I’m not authorized — I’ve seen that before and it always lets me in if I go first to my own project page, but not this time. I’ll keep trying. Or maybe I can post it here. I have other parts – description and question to post also. Please be patient! I guess…

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This touches on a subject very close to home. I based my protagonist off of a younger version of myself. I adapt it to fit the needs of the story. I believe geeky, bullied, abused kids have a story to be told. And to invert that experience of not fitting in on Earth into an experience where she actually fits in with the teens on Novapraxii…

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Kalos Chu, a longtime assistant, recently sold a pilot to HBO.

https://deadline.com/2026/08/hbo-imposter-drama-spec-assistant-kalos-chu-lauren-lefranc-1237063182/

I read it – it’s really good – but it’s also hyper-specific. I think it’s a great lesson on how the more specific your writing becomes, the more universally powerful it can be.

Kalos’…

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https://catalyst.voyagemedia.com/?attachment=13743&document_type=document&download_document_file=1&document_file=1236

I don’t see your script pages here to read.

Great advice. Earlier this year a director (in theatre) said to me unless the scene I was working on was taking the story forward, don’t bother with it. I’m still making up my mind about that. At the heart of what he was saying was not to use a scene to consolidate a story line, but to progress it.

While I’m here, I must mention a series…

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https://catalyst.voyagemedia.com/projects/lycanosferaty-the-blood-born/

Very interesting information! As always – Thank You!

I didn’t want to save the whole thing in PDF, just 5 pages, but I may have to do the whole thing just for this time. A lot has to be changed. I haven’t tried yet to convert the whole thing to PDF but if I need help, I’ll let you know — thank you!

Thanks, Seth. I have Open Office and Libre as well as Word 365 — maybe they are working against each other? Trelby won’t copy into any of them, either. I hope if we take it in for repair that they can fix it, but will wait ’til after Monday. Will try again tomorrow — getting late here.

Thank you, Michael – I guess I could do that — I have about 30 pages and still a lot to weed out. I was trying to get 5 pages singled out into a separate document so I could make a PDF of it. We may have to take the computer in to be fixed soon.

https://catalyst.voyagemedia.com/projects/the-play-1717625263/documents/

You could try downloading OpenOffice. It is free and almost just like Word.

@junebug0051aol-com Hi Jackie, sorry to miss your initial comment. I’m here if you need help converting your Trelby script to PDF. Just let me know and I’ll send the quick steps I found.