Cynthia Whitcomb, president of Willamette Writers, speaks about the programs of this non-profit writers group with 1500 members and four chapters in the Pacific Northwest, including Portland, Newport, Salem, Eugene, and Medford. Cynthia is the author of Holidazed, a play produced by ART in Portland. As a screenwriter, she’s sold 69 scripts and had 29 scripts filmed and televised; she taught screenwriting at UCLA. She’s the author of Writing Your Screenplay and has a website at www.cynthiawhitcomb.com

Francis Veber (The Man with One Red Shoe, La cage aux folles) describes his encounter with his idol, Billy Wilder, and the most important thing he’s learned about screenwriting. Veber’s comments were recorded at the Writers Guild Foundation’s event “Writers on Writing.” To purchase a DVD of this or other Writers Guild Foundation events, go to WGFoundation.org/dvd.aspx.

Movies are probably the most fun filled entertainment that people can have. Age is no bar for watching movies. Starting from children to adults, movies can mesmerize everybody. The first thing that comes to our mind when we talk about movies is a big hall, large screen, lights off, comfortable seats and obviously popcorns. However, that used to be the notion. The picture has changed a lot these days. Movie download websites are here to help you. Now watching a good movie is just a mouse click away from you.

Gone are those days when one had to visit to a cinema hall or buy CDs or DVDs to watch a film. This is the age of Internet. You connect yourself to the Internet and you will find many websites which will be providing you the options of downloading movies.

These are all paid sites. That means you have to pay a certain amount of money to download the particular movie. All you need to do is to visit that particular website. There, you will find a list of the films that are available for download. Below you will find a blank space where you have to fill up your email address and credit card number. Once you have paid, the film is all yours.

These sites have a wide range of films available for download. You will find the old classics here that you have longed to watch but never got the opportunity. Almost all the new films are also available here. Do not forget about the rare movie collection. They are also available in these sites.

The good thing is, there is a whole lot of movies download websites available nowadays. The competition is on and to captivate more and more customers to their own site, every one of them is providing different facilities. The price has also become very low. Lower than the DVD libraries.

There are some free movie download websites. In these sites you can download movies free of cost. While downloading a movie from the free sites, you need to keep some basic information in your mind.

Check properly whether the site is legal or not. There are a few sites, which are not legal. Downloading movies from there can land you in deep trouble. You can end up in a breach of copy write act case, which is a crime.

While downloading for your child, make sure which movie you are downloading. Read the review of that movie carefully. Sometimes the name may confuse you. It may seem from the title that the film is a universal one, but the content may be an adult one.

It may seem a problem to find out good movie download websites. It is not at all a big deal. Go to your favorite search engine and search for them. The search engine will automatically show you the list of the best ones.

“What Should I Write About” How to Select Your Topic

 

At the beginning of this process, you may feel as if you have entered a strange territory without a map. You need guanidine for choosing your topic if you must select your own or for narrowing a general topic assigned to you. This section shows you how to get ideas for topics and what subjects are best to avoid.

 

Three Criteria for a Topic

 

Whether you write a literary, argumentative, position, or description paper, the subject you select must meet three important criteria.

 

The topic should interest you.
It should be written your abilities.
There should be enough information available on it to complete a paper.

 

 

The first criterion is the most important. Something besides fear of failure has to sustain you through all the hours it takes to research, write and revise a report of term paper. Make the paper a process of discovery for yourself, something you want to know or say about a topic. That desire will help to see you through to the end of the project.

 

The second criterion is also essential. You may be interested in a topic, but not have the background of ability to handle it in a paper. Say, for example, you are interested in the flights or voyagers 1 and 2. You want to do a report on some of the computer programs that send commands to the small spacecrafts. The scientific journals are filled with complex diagrams and explanations, but you find none of it makes any sense to you. You have no background in computer programming and no ability to translate technical information into plain English.

 

You will either have to find a book or an article that translates the material for you or find another topic—perhaps what voyager 2 revealed about the rings of Uranus or the surprises the spacecraft uncovered as it passed by the outer planets. Although the topic about the computer programs fulfills two of the three criteria—it interests you and there is plenty of information—if it is beyond your abilities, you will not be able to complete a paper successfully.

Finally, make sure enough information is readily available for you to develop your paper. For instance, you may have heard about rock-and-roll bands springing up in Tibet. The subject intrigues you, and you feel you have enough musical background to write about it. But your preliminary research turns up only a half-page article in a weekly news magazine. Obviously, you are not going to be able to build a ten- or fifteen- page report on one short article. A better topic may be the rise of rock bands in China and Japan, a phenomenon covered in the U.S. and international press.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finding a General Area of Interest

Suppose your must choose the topic of a paper yourself. Although this task might seem somewhat overwhelming at first, it can be broken down into manageable steps. The first step knows where to go for ideas about general of broad subject areas.

There are several major sources for topic ideas; textbooks; reference books that list term paper or report topics; teachers and librarians; your own or your friends’ interests and experiences; and on-line databases, Internet, and Web sites. If you must do a term paper for a history course, for example, skim through your history textbook to find a broad subject area that interests you. Perhaps you find the European voyages of discovery appealing. Or your interest may be piqued by the medical practices of the Middle Age or the complex politics of the Balkans in the mid-1990s. 

 

If your textbooks do not provide a topic of interest, investigate the reference section of any bookstore or library. You are likely to find books that list hundred of term paper or report topic under all subject areas—history, literature, art social science, political science, and psychology. One of these topics may appeal to you.

 

Teachers and librarians are also good sources for ideas. They can help you to pinpoint an area of interest or can suggest topics that you haven’t considered. It is a good idea to get to know your reference librarian, and this can be one way to introduce you. Good reference librarians are invaluable guides through the maze of research and reference sources. Their expertise can save you hours of effort.   

 

If none of these sources yields any result, you can fall back on yourself or on your friend. Think about the movies, magazine, books, or activities that interest you: science fiction, sports, the war on drugs, international relations, music, the environment, psychic phenomena.

 

What would you like to know about these topics? What opinion do you have about them? Do you think drugs should be legalized? Do you feel that the government should do more or less to help protect the environment? In your opinion, have science fiction movies or TV series had any impact on shaping our current world? Should professional athletes be allowed to play in the Olympic Games? Are psychic phenomena real or imaginary?

 

One of these four sources—textbooks, reference books, teachers and librarians, your own or your friend’ interest—will give you a general topic area for your paper.

 

Subject Areas to Avoid

 

Part of the process of choosing a topic knows which subjects not to use. In your search for a topic, keep in mind these guidelines for subjects to avoid.

 

·        Subjects that is too recent. If   a new law has just been passed, for example, there will not be enough information about its impact to serve as the subject of paper.

·        Subjects that is too sensitive or controversial. Some issues, such as the firing of a popular principal or a recent racial incident in school, are highly emotional and likely to provoke strong reaction on all sides. It is often difficult to find objective information to present a fair treatment of the topic.

·         Subjects that is hard to investigate. This can include subjects that are too narrow or specialized to have much information, too technical for your own and the readers’ background, or for which information is too difficult to acquire. For example, the information may be in specialized libraries closed to the public, in international institutions, or written in a language you can not read.

·        Subject that are distasteful or uninteresting to you. You may be tempted to accept any topic just to have something to write about. However, material that is unappealing to you at the beginning will tend to become more so as you would on it. If you dislike the subject of your paper, it’s a good bet your readers won’t like the way you write about it. Your own distaste or boredom will come across in your writing.

 

Remember the three criteria mentioned previously as you search for a usable topic: It must interest you, it must be within your abilities, and there must be enough information readily available on the topic to complete a paper.

 

 

Site Link:

 

http://www.academic-writing.net

http://www.academic-writing.net/termpapers.htm

Clip from “Dreams on Spec” — the first documentary to profile screenwriters