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My name is Mikhail Saburov.

I’m a screenwriter, an AFI Directing alum, and co-founder of Acts of Writing. I’ve taught screenwriting to about 1,000 people, which is roughly 1,000 times I’ve said “show, don’t tell” out loud and then quietly wondered whether I’d explained anything at all.

That’s what this newsletter is for.

Most craft advice describes what good writing looks like. Very little of it explains why the thing works — what is actually happening in a viewer’s head when a scene lands. So every other Wednesday, I take one scene apart, find the psychological mechanism underneath it, and show you how to steal it.

That’s it. One scene, one mechanism — named, explained, and handed to you in a shape you can use right away.

If you want the fastest sense of whether we’re going to get along:

Fight Club: How to Write (Awesome) Voiceover — the first rule is you don’t talk about it.

True Detective: How to Connect the Audience to an Unreadable Character — two men in a car talking philosophy. That’s not a scene, that’s a bad podcast.

The Zone of Interest: How to Terrify the Audience — using only technical language, charts, and fascism.

In Bruges: How to Write Effective Dialogue — or why the most boring mise-en-scène doesn’t feel boring at all.

The Bourne Identity: How to Set Up a Romantic Interest — a romance masterclass hiding inside a spy thriller.

One issue every other Wednesday. Text and audio both, so you can read it or have me read it to you while you pretend to work. Free for now — I’d rather not make promises about forever.

Because, as you saw above, my name is Mikhail, and not Mother Teresa.

I started this to build an audience I could eventually sell classes and my consulting services to. I still would like to. But I also just love nerding out about why any of this works, and how you can sit fifty people in front of an off-white piece of fabric, project some light at it, and make them cry about people who don’t exist.

If that sounds like your kind of problem, welcome.

(And yes, there are cat photos. Some of you are only here for those. I’ve made peace with it.)