Go Into The Story: The Future (Part 2)

I could use your feedback as my blog begins its 10th year of existence.

Last week I posted this, an initial step in reflecting about the nature and purpose of Go Into The Story. If you’re at all a fan of the blog, please take a few minutes to hit the link and check out that post.

Bottom line, it feels like it’s time for a change. Since I launched the blog in May 2008, I have accomplished pretty much everything I envisioned from the start — and then some.

With nearly 22,000 posts and hundreds of archived subject areas, the site has become a significant online writer’s resource.

2017 looks to be the busiest year for site traffic projecting to be 1.5M unique visits and 2.5M page views, which suggests GITS continues to be a go-to online resource.

Now approaching 6 years as the official screenwriting blog of the Black List, that relationship with what I consider to be the most influential screenwriting brand in Hollywood continues to be a strong one.

I always intended the blog to provide a connection to aspiring writers, which it has done, but surprisingly it’s also become a mainstay for many working professionals in Hollywood.

The @GoIntoTheStory Twitter feed currently has over 46K followers.

That said, the social media landscape has evolved. While site traffic has increased, comments and conversations related to blog posts has declined.

Some features and series which I’ve run for several years appear to draw hardly any engagement at all.

So part of what I’m trying to do now is gauge what it is you, GITS readers, are most interested in.

There’s also this: My circumstances have changed. When I began the blog, I was working as an executive producer for a TV production company. Now I’m a college professor. My interests, both personal and professional, have evolved, so I need to consider what it is I find of interest to write about.

In an ideal world, this conversation about the blog will help me to find a nice balance point, writing and posting content which continues to be of value to people while allowing me to focus on content I want to explore.

With that lengthy preface, let me lay down a few things I’ve decided:

• I will continue to post on a daily basis. Why? Because I remain committed to providing a site where writers can drop in every day to find inspiration and information. Plus that is an extension of what I’ve been doing for three decades — reading the trades, tracking the news, reflecting on the state of the business, pondering the craft.
• I will decrease the number of daily posts. For many years, I’ve averaged 6 posts per day. I think it’s time to focus more on writing more to depth on subjects and less to breadth.
• Here are some series I will continue to post:

On Writing
Screenwriting 101
Screenwriting News
Spec Script Deals

• Here are some series I am inclined to drop:

Daily Dialogue
Saturday Hot Links
Script Reading and Analysis

• Here are series I think I will continue drawing mainly from archives:

Great Scenes
Script To Screen
The Business of Screenwriting
Writing and the Creative Life

• Here are some special events I want to continue:

A Story Idea Each Day for a Month
Annual Spec Script Deal Analysis
Zero Draft Thirty Challenge

• Here are some areas I’d like to explore more to depth:

Character Based Screenwriting approach to Movie Analysis
Character Based Screenwriting approach to Script Analysis

Basically use the blog to delve more deeply into my interest in character archetypes, the relationship of the Protagonist’s psychological journey to that of the other characters in a story, Carl Jung, etc.

I suspect I’ll also be inclined to comment on the state of the business from time to time.

And I hope to be able to do more interviews with screenwriters and filmmakers. This requires a lot of time to do proper research. If I reduce the number of blog posts, I should be able to pull together more in-depth interviews.

So I ask a favor of you: What do you want to see? What do you think we can drop as a blog feature? How can the site best service your needs as a writer?

Thanks in advance for any feedback you send my way.

Onward.