Our Name is Changing!

“Starting Points” is becoming “Residuals”. The name is changing, but everything else will stay the same. Actually it gets better because we're tying into the massive screenwriting discord server I run

Sep 17, 2023

“Starting Points” was a temporary name I chose when I started this Substack as a creative experiment a few months ago

At first I played around with writing short fiction and just having fun with whatever came to mind, but I kept writing down ideas for topics related to screenwriting. Probably because I teach classes (and also this business is baffling and navigating it pretty much consumes my time).

So naturally things shifted. The topics changed. I’m much happier with what this has become (and all the new followers!).

Throughout that shift, the name stayed the same and honestly… it doesn’t make any sense for what this has become: a screenwriting community. A place to workshop and ask questions and figure out how to build a better business where we enjoy the work each day.

But here’s the thing…

I already run a screenwriting community on discord called Residuals.

I know, I know. It’s all painfully on brand for me.

The Residuals Discord has been around for about four years, and is a space with 200+ verified, working writers and 1000+ aspiring writers. We have all kinds of channels and even host events. But the thing we don’t have is a consistent topic of conversation that jumps from a longer post… like, say, a newsletter?

That’s why, after MANY bad ideas for new titles (some of you *did* vote for “The Vomit Draft”), I’ve decided to change this newsletter to be a complimentary project to the discord.

This Newsletter Will Now and Forever Be Known as “Residuals”

And while you don’t need to join the discord to get the full newsletter experience (even for paid members), you CAN choose to join the larger community where the topics we dig into here can be discussed further.

Sound good?

I thought so! But hey, it’s all still a homegrown experiment that I run myself, so let’s try it out and see what happens.