Dispatch from the Front Line: Eric Moyer

Occasionally I feature creatives in a series called Dispatches from the Front Line, observations from writers and filmmakers on the front edge of their careers. Today’s guest post comes from Eric Moyer who has done something pretty unique:

How did I get here?

Did you ever ask yourself that question? The answer isn’t always as straightforward as we’d like, which is one of the reasons I wrote my free ebook, Back to Ocean City: A Screenwriter’s Journey. I’m not claiming success…or failure. After taking a break when my daughter was born, this book felt like the first step of a new beginning.

My film career definitely had its ups and downs. I once had Big Bang Theory star Kaley Cuoco attached to one of my scripts, while production on another project was stopped when the investor was murdered. These stories and more are covered, but there is a universal theme that ties the book together: inspiration.

Before the scripts and short stories, there were the people, places and things that inspired the creativity. In my case, that was Ocean City, NJ, and a teacher named Miss Picone. Outside of our parents, teachers are the first real role models we have to guide us. I believe most screenwriters can think of a high school teacher or college professor that gave them that extra bit of encouragement that made a difference in their life.

I also made the ebook interactive with my website. If there is a script excerpt that was filmed, it links to a video as well as other additional content.

Here are links for the book:

Chapters are posted as pages on the website.

Free Download for Amazon Kindles.

Free Download for iTunes.

Follow the book on Twitter.

Back to Ocean City contains script excerpts from the last twenty years along with the inspirations behind them. One of the challenges I faced with publishing an ebook was the formatting. If you are going to publish one of your screenplays as an ebook, you’ll quickly find that the margins and spacing can become a formatting nightmare.

You will have high price quotes from ebook formatters telling you how much work is involved in making your screenplay translate to an ebook. They will tell you they have to “nuke” it and start from scratch.

It’s not necessary. Through many hours of experimenting, I found a magic formula to format your screenplay into an ebook all on your own. Even if you don’t read it, download Back to Ocean City and take a look at the formatting. Here is how I did it:

Scrivener — Since Back to Ocean City contained many script excerpts, Scrivener was an important first step in the process because of the way you can organize your book. Scrivener utilizes folders to keep things organized. Want to change the order of chapters in your book? No problem. Just move the folders around. Scrivener does allow you to export your book an an epub or mobi, but there will be margin issues. Instead, compile your file as a Microsoft Word document.

Microsoft Word — This is really just to get your book into Apple Pages.

Apple Pages — Launch Apple Pages and open your Word document. This is where you will finalize your book for publishing. In View, click on Show Invisibles. This will help you find problems with paragraphs and spacing, especially in script sections. In Insert, choose Table of Contents, then choose Document. You will need to select a paragraph style so that Pages knows where each new chapter begins. The only downside is that this generates a Table of Contents that can only be accessed at the top menu of iPads. It does not create an actual Table of Contents “page” that is required for Amazon Kindles. That’s okay. I found a workaround. Export your final epub from Pages and use this for iTunes. For Amazon, proceed to step 4.

Calibre — Import your epub into Calibre and under epub export, select Insert Inline Table of Contents. Save this brand new epub that now has a Table of Contents page and submit it to Amazon. They will convert it to a mobi and you can preview how it will look on Kindle devices.

Apple Pages is the most important program for the formatting. Theoretically, you could start and finish in Pages, but if your book is long, you could face challenges when editing. It is also important to mention the ebook editing program called Sigil. Nothing against Sigil, but if you try to import your perfectly formatted book into it to make some final tweaks, it will add code to your file that will mess it all up.

Please feel free to reach out to me with any questions about these instructions via the website. I look forward to seeing more published screenplays on Amazon and iTunes!

Hope you enjoy Back to Ocean City!

As screenwriters continue to adapt a more literary approach to screenplay format, combined with the growing interest in the craft, I suspect we’ll be seeing more scripts available in book form. For instance, did you know you can buy a Kindle edition ebook of the screenplay for the movie Ex Machina?

So check out Eric’s free ebook. And if you’re interested in self-publishing, Eric’s advice on formatting should come in handy.

Thanks, Eric, and good luck!

For other Dispatches from the Front Line, go here.

If you have a story to tell about your experiences as you are making your up into The Business, feel free to email me (GITSblog at gmail dot com) for a possible feature here on the blog.

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