I was pondering thoughts on a column here about the general craft of writing, and doing it. Then I saw a friend’s Facebook post: Write what comes naturally.

That’s a good starting point, even if I must say after writing professionally for some 35 years, writing is in some ways an unnatural state. But I think that above thought trumps the largely sagacious and true “write what you know.” After all, sometimes you have to write things you don’t know. And write to discover new things.

The story — it’s the heart of any good film, the first major and ultimate final element that makes or breaks a movie. Duh! We all know that, don’t we? (I’ve seen films that make me wonder….)

Before I venture into the specifics of writing, a bit of context as mentioned in my bio — the two films that captivated me at pivotal ages. Two films I would urge any aspiring screenwriter or filmmaker to see, and see again and again.

“Nobody knows anything,” says William Goldman, writer of such Oscar winning scripts as Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid and All The President’s Men. I ran across it again recently in an article in England’s superb music magazine Mojo on the film Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, possibly the most (and in a way wonderfully) horrid and inane movie ever made and a flop of staggering proportions.

Yeah, right…. You and everybody else, including me. If that’s your ambition, by now I am sure you’ve encountered the same thing I’ve run into when one mentions it to people — just about everyone has an idea for a movie that they’re sure is a winner. And many of them think they can write a script that will surely hit the silver screen, and then fortune and maybe even fame well follow.