Hollywood is enamored with the franchise. A profitable one can sustain sequels across multiple decades that are worth billions of dollars in ticket sales alone. But, as the box-office ups and downs of the “Star Trek” films have shown, the formula is far from a guarantee. The New Yorker has charted a part of the expanding galaxy of movie series, ranking them by franchise gross, per-movie gross, and franchise profitability in this great interactive info-graphic.

Bless the Writers Guild of America – and not just for their awesome health plan (which includes dental coverage!). There’s lots of great info on their website, including this set of articles about writing for TV that really lays out the landscape and what to expect when you’re expecting – to write for TV.

Thanks to 101books for this funny post on what the astronauts can teach us about writing dialog.

101 Books doesn’t specify, but I’d say this excellent snippet of dialog can teach you that repetition, misunderstanding, surprise and plain talk are all great ingredients for comedy – plus, of course, poop. Poop is almost always funny, especially in an unexpected, serious, high-tech situation.

Click here for more space talk.

What’s wrong with a little well-placed denial?

If we really let ourselves embrace and admit how much work it takes to write a script or book, very few of them would ever get written.

How much work it takes to even make a draft of anything, much less to rewrite it several times (because, if we’re being honest, you know that’s what it will take) until it’s good enough to actually go public! Of course, you lie to yourself.

1) This one will write itself.

2) I don’t really need an outline.

3) One draft should do it.

4) I can finish a draft this month/year.

5) All that negative feedback is just because they’re jealous.

6) I won’t get greedy when there’s a bidding war and will go with the agent/publisher/buyer that’s best for the project.

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Awesome artwork by Erik Johansson