I've been using my screenplay Portals as an example throughout this book. Portals—a full 110-page feature movie screenplay is now out in the market and has already gotten several read requests from Hollywood producers.

A read request happens when you send a query e-mail or letter to a producer or agent and they reply to you with something along the lines of "...an interesting concept, I'd like to read it." These requests mean you've got something good enough, at least, to be considered. I have more for you about how to market and get read requests in Chapter 12, Marketing Your Scripts.

In this chapter, I'll share my secrets in creating and writing a screenplay using Celtx. Actually, they're not really secrets but rather good practices developed by many scriptwriters over the years. We will, however, see how to use them the Celtx way.

First, we create a project container.