This idea of the audience knowing more than the characters in the narrative is referred to as Dramatic Irony, and it is one of the major building blocks for suspenseful writing. BluecatScreenplay.com Elements of Suspense

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LET’S MAKE A DEAL

Be aware of the things that a protagonist admires about himself that are provably false. Then prove it. So, me. I would never change my dynamic, awesome female protagonist into a man. I worked hard on that character, it’s important to the story that she’s a woman, it’s a groundbreaking part an actress would kill…

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INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS

Oscar Isaac, who plays Llewyn, said the script was was loosely based on the experiences of Dave Van Ronk, whose book was about how electric and fantastic the folk music scene was in the Village in the early 60’s, then there were two paragraphs about this crappy trip to Chicago, then back to how fascinating…

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On being directed by the Coen Brothers: They’re very locked together about what they want. The directing is tone management. When Joel approaches you to make a correction, he tells you what you don’t have to do. Oscar Isaac at the Austin Inside Llewyn Davis screening.

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The script for Inside Llewyn Davis was so lean. It was weird. There were a lot of ellipses. There would be like, one line, and then some dots, then “act here” in parentheses. Oscar Isaac and T Bone Burnett at the Inside Llewyn Davis screening at Austin Film Festival Somehow…that’s exactly how I imagined it…

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@rianjohnson Thanks again for today! Thought you’d appreciate this. pic.twitter.com/MUVtQxA9HQ — John Scaryman (@jmerriman) October 28, 2013

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SCREENWRITING TEMPLATES

If you beat out movies while you’re watching them to see how they work, you might think there’s something to the whole formula thing. There is, partly. Eventually. But it doesn’t have anything to do with developing your story, or even writing your script. Here’s a story: Writer friend gets a great idea. Whips out…

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