Update: Go Into The Story and the move to Medium

Evidently it’s the season of change in my neck of the woods. As I announced yesterday, I have accepted an offer to become a full-time assistant professor at the School of Cinematic Arts at DePaul University beginning September 1. That means my family is in the midst of moving to Chicago.

This piggybacks on another announcement in The Wrap on April 5, 2016:

The full list of publications moving onto Medium were The Awl, Pacific Standard, Electric Literature, Franklin Leonard‘s The Black List, Femsplain, FilmSchoolRejects, The Bold Italic, Monday Note, NewCo Shift, The Banana Boat (by The Infatuation), MEL and Lorne Michaels‘s Above Average and The Kicker.

And the following companies planned to move publications on the platform soon: Time Inc.’s Money and Fortune Medium-native offshoots, The Hairpin, Women and Hollywood, Go Into the Story (by Scott Myers), Dangerous Minds, War Is Boring, and The Evergreen Review.

What is Medium? I would say it’s basically Blogging 2.0., an online platform which goes beyond 140 Twitter characters or clickbait. As the Medium folks say, it’s for people who want to learn and share what they discover with others who hold a common interest. In other words, smart content. That’s one reason why I feel the transition to Medium is a natural fit.

From a publishing standpoint, it’s easier. Right now with WordPress, every post I do involves working with HTML commands and while I’ve gotten pretty good, it makes for a more cumbersome process. At Medium, once I get on top of the learning curve, the day to day operation of composing and publishing posts should require less time.

As far as GITS readers are concerned, there will be two obvious changes: The interface and the daily output of posts. Per the former, you can go here to see the Black List blog on Medium to get a feel of what the new Go Into The Story layout will look like. The most dramatic difference is that instead of posts ‘traveling’ down a center column, you will be able to see all of each day’s posts at once. Plus I will be able to position permanent posts and rotate items of interest in other sections on the home page, all of them easily navigable.

[If you’re not interesting in going into the weeds design-wise, you may skip this paragraph. What I’m testing out is top section featuring each day’s posts. Below that another section with some permanent posts including Archives, About, Screenwriting Master Class news, etc. Below that sections in which I will rotate popular posts from the past or ones which may have slipped into the fog of time and I think are relevant to something going on in the business or just interesting as is. BTW although the tagging system is considerably different, the search function on Medium is supposed to be fantastic, and in general, you should find it much more user friendly.]

In terms of the number of daily posts, one of the earliest ideas I had when I launched the blog was to approach it as a news and inspiration resource which in my mind meant uploading several items per day, a site a writer could drop in on multiple times each day to catch up on things and touch base with their creative reflections. The number of posts slowly drifted upward to the point where I was averaging over 7 per day. Crazy, right? Part of that was driven by my desire to create a mass of content to make GITS a go-to educational resource covering just about every conceivable subject area related to (specifically) screenwriting and (generally) writing. I think it’s fair to say we have met that goal as we are approaching 20,000 posts! I’ve settled into a pattern of 6 posts per day, I feel it’s time to adjust the daily output of posts to a more reasonable number. What I propose is 4. So the new schedule will be this:

6AM: Daily Dialogue. I have a special affection for this series as I love waking up to a bit of movie history and dialogue inspiration. Plus it’s a series which members of the GITS community have contributed to for years.

10AM: On Writing / Screenwriting 101 / Great Scenes / Script To Screen / Interview (Written) / Interview (Video). This is straight ahead educational in nature, learning from writers through their own words and their creative output.

2PM: GITS Interviews / Business of Screenwriting / Writing and the Creative Life / Movie Analysis / Script Analysis. These represent weekly and ongoing series where we can drill down into subjects on a more intensive basis.

6PM: Special Features. This will include Reader Questions, my observations on news items which pop up, and open forum conversation pieces.

Mind you, this is not etched in stone. As always, I will be responsive to the interests and desire of the Go Into The Story community, which leads me to my final thought here today: What do you want? Is there something you want more of on the blog? Some point of focus, series, or feature currently not covered here? As long as we’re going through these ch-ch-ch-changes, let’s use it as an opportunity to brainstorm ideas and kick things around.

I am targeting a Tuesday, July 19 transition date. We will keep the WordPress site up for a week or so, which means double-posting by yours truly, but I want to be sure the switch goes cleanly and to allow the GITS community time to acclimate itself.

Finally I know change can be a hassle, even a bit nervy. I’ll admit, between packing up my household, work, and learning Medium, I’m scrambling right now, but my gut tells me this is a good move for Go Into The Story. I’m excited to see where our collective migration takes us. I hope you are, too!

Onward!

Tomorrow: How my shift into academic life at DePaul will impact my involvement at Screenwriting Master Class.

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