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1) Hey quick thread for screenwriters who use Twitter to remind them of something Twitter is actually good for: asking questions rather than making shit up. Particularly when it comes to cultural subjects.
2) I know some of you were attracted to writing not just to tell stories, but because you're more introverted, or not comfortable engaging with strangers. And for Hollywood humans, the production pace is SO FRENETIC and culture all-involving, it's hard to look outside.
3) Hollywood is a one-industry mill town, but the industry happens to be entertainment.
4) I use twitter not so much for what I write but who I read. This site gives me Exvangelicals and religious writers you'd be surprised I follow, military grunts and political writers and legal experts and LGBTQ activists and black activists and conservative economists ...
5) More times than I can count, I have been about to write a character -- if working alone, without a staff, and even a big staff can't cover everything -- and realized I know about half of what I need to write them a) in an informed way b) not fuck up the way they think and talk
6) and more times than I can count, I have found someone on this site and POLITELY asked if I could DM them or email them a question, and then if they responded I POLITELY sent them a brief, targetted question, and gotten a friendly, detailed answer.
7) Look, @RadioFreeTom and I fight like cats and dogs politically but when I was writing the MAGNUM reboot he very nicely kept me from making an ass of myself when I was writing about a Naval intelligence officer's education.
8) Point is, this is not just a useful tool for you. this is your OBLIGATION AS A WRITER. As screenwriters in particular we have the weight of the media ecosystem behind us. This is a moral issue.
9) We will always get things wrong or have to change things or need to adapt them to the medium or just lose to a stupid network note. Fine. We're all human. But in our current techno-hellscape, the one benefit is still this marvelous, unparalleled connectivity.
10) Even getting a "what's the 101 article/book/concept from your own group's POV about this subject" is a good start, and can be done without a DM.
11) I know it's loud out here. But just the simple act of communicating with another human, just ASKING what they think, it helps all our writing, and all our culture. /xx
