There’s a brand new agreement between the WGA and the AMPTP! And since John was the co-chair of the negotiating committee, he’s excited to share all the details of the 2026 MBA.
Links:
Email us at ask@johnaugust.com
You can download the episode here.
John and Craig connect the dots on transitions and how they can be just as important as the scenes themselves. They look at how to get your scenes flowing into one another, the many different types of transitions, when to use “CUT TO,” and how to use your cuts to tell your story.
We also discuss those shots we no longer need to see in movies, and use a lawsuit filed by two GI Joe writers to examine some common issues created by prewriting.
In our bonus segment for premium members, the Olympics are coming to Los Angeles and we have conflicting feelings!
Links:
Email us at ask@johnaugust.com
You can download the episode here.
John sits down with the Northwest Screenwriters Guild at an event to promote the Scriptnotes book, and ends up having a poignant conversation about how the career of screenwriting has changed, missteps John made throughout his career, and how his approach to screenwriting has evolved over time.
He also answers questions on kicking bad writing habits, screenwriting careers outside of Hollywood, what to look for in the projects you choose, whether age matters in a screenwriting career, writing your calling card movie, the sidekick problem, and the real story behind the Prince of Persia movie.
In our bonus segment for premium members, John has been hanging out with sketch writers for the last few weeks and is excited to share what he’s learned about writing sketch comedy.
Links:
Email us at ask@johnaugust.com
You can download the episode here.
Fling is a brand new feature for Highland Pro that addresses a long-simmering frustration: getting feedback on what you’ve written.
Whenever I finish a draft, I want to give it to some trusted people to read — both for comments and general proofreading. In the old days, that generally meant printing and handing it to them, or emailing a PDF. In the case of my assistant, I’ll often Slack him the original Highland file and ask him to mark up typos in Revision Mode.
This works, but it’s not ideal. You end up with multiple copies of every document.
What I really longed for was something like Google Docs links. When my college-aged daughter wants me to read something she wrote, she’ll simply send me the URL. I can make my notes right there in the document.
That makes sense for Google Docs, because it’s already on the web. I wondered: could we do the same thing for a native app like Highland Pro?
Surprisingly, yes!
Highland Fling creates a temporary, online version of your document that you can share with anyone. Your readers can then easily leave their notes and comments, all of which appear immediately back in your original document.
Your readers don’t need Highland Pro. For them, it’s just a web page. The whole experience is kinda magic.
Here’s a video about it:
I use Fling all the time, both for screenwriting and all the other documents I write. It’s the best of both worlds: Highland Pro’s powerful native editing, and the simplicity of sharing a link. We made a step-by-step guide for using Highland Fling, but honestly you’re likely to immediately intuit it.
Fling’s short duration (either one hour, one day, or seven days) is a feature, not a bug. A Fling isn’t meant to last. You’re not publishing something for the ages, just right now when you need someone to read something.
Around the office, we still use Notion for items where multiple people are writing and editing, and for reference material we want to keep around. But for everything that’s “just read this please,” Fling is ideal.
An example: This spring, one of my jobs as WGA Negotiating Committee co-chair was writing a 30-minute speech to members about our priorities in this negotiation. I wrote the speech in Highland Pro, of course. Fling was the perfect way to share it with my collaborators. They could make their notes right in the document, and see each other’s notes.
This blog post you’re reading? I flung it to Drew for proofreading. It’s our default way of putting eyes on anything.
Fling is available for the Mac version of Highland Pro right now. I’m really proud of how it turned out. I suspect many writers will find it just as game-changing as I do.