WORKSHOP SCHEDULE SHIFT

The Story Dynamics Workshops scheduled to run in twelve cities
November 2002 through February 2003 are now being shifted. They will
start in December 2003 and run throughout the next calendar year, one
city per month. Going off without adequate preparation for this workshop series
serves no useful purpose. In shifting the schedule: promotion should be
better, the supporting website should be further along, word-of-mouth should
have more time to build, and each city can receive more individual attention.

The specifics of the new schedule will be announced shortly, but it
is intended to keep the order of the cities the same (just spread
them out one-per-month). This change will help in resolving Contest
commitments given the greater preparation time and likely interest in
attending.

All apologies to those who had planned to participate in a specific
workshop as currently scheduled. The learning experience itself will
be enhanced with the added time--interested participants can now focus more on
working the prerequisites, for example--and the holidays can now be enjoyed
without interruption.

In a related development, the screenwriting exercises offered through
the Empire Screenwriting Resource are now being broken out for:
screenwriting fundamentals, Story Dynamics, and general (word use,
readability, presentability). New applicable exercises, prompted by this
breakout, are to be added shortly. This should result in a more focused and
thorough testing in each area.

SITE TRANSLATION

Google.com offers free translation for individual website pages from
English into French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese (at least). It
seems to do a bang-up job, but due consideration ought be given to
likely untranslatable (by machine at least) turns of phrase. A link
to this has now been added at the opening page for the Empire
Screenwriting Resource.

MORE MOVIE QUESTIONS

What aspect of the concept for MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING largely carries the
movie?

(Watch for discussion on this movie--general "answers" to this and
other questions posed about it--in an upcoming missive. If analyzing
current movies in light of the material presented in the Empire
Screenwriting Resource is of use to anyone, it may become a regular
feature of EmpireUpdate.)

Apologies again to anyone inconvenienced by the shift in workshop schedule. The
move is intended to make a better ultimate experience for all.