BAD PACING: There is an idea set up that something is going to happen, and then nothing dramatic happens. And that keeps looping. GOOD PACING: Something is about to happen. Something completely unexpected happens. Then, CAR! Then garbage cans are flying everywhere. New problem. And the lawn still isn’t mowed.
Read moreI think the average guy thinks they’re pro-woman, just because they think they’re a nice guy and someone has told them that they’re awesome. But the truth is far from it. Unless you are actively, consciously working against the gravitational pull of the culture, you will predictably, thematically, create these sort of fucked-up representations. Junot…
Read moreThat’s one of my least favorite roles that women fill on TV shows — the killjoy who tells the goofy fun guy to knock it off. We consciously tried to avoid that dynamic — we had them like each other, treat each other like peers, seek advice from each other, and (maybe most importantly) we…
Read moreMore on Dan Harmon’s “Story Circle” and my theory it is a cosine wave
More on Dan Harmon’s “Story Circle” and my theory it is a cosine wave chrisdwoo: I’ve discussed before how Dan Harmon (creator of Community, co-writer for Monster House) has distilled the Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth into a very basic tool for describing the arcs of a story. Harmon prefers to see his story structure as a…
Read morelunalovegouda: Those people who constantly reblog your stuff but you never really talk:
Read moreHOW DOES TENSION WORK?
Like this. As long as its central question stays unresolved, it is tension. It’s the only thing that makes readers turn pages. Amplify these moments in your script. Set them up and draw them out. You need to build one in each scene, a bigger one for each sequence and the ultimate one that stretches…
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PUTTING YOUR FAVORITE OBSCURE SONGS IN ACTION LINES
How odd, I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words. David Foster Wallace, from The Pale King. (via literarymiscellany)
Read moreBECHDELLING LIKE A CHAMP
If all this Bechdelling has you thinking about making some of your supporting characters women, but you’re not absolutely sure how to execute it well, fear not. It’s easy. Give the woman characters a sexually neutral place in the story. Who she’s having sex with, or wants to, or who wants to have sex with…
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