When you conceive your story, don’t forget to build in emotion. People watch movies to feel things. It gets no simpler than that. That begins with the writer. We can talk all day about structure and beats and plot points, but if nobody in the script has their heart on the line, then it all…
Read moreINVALUABLE PRACTICAL ADVICE
beyondtheduckpond: Four Lessons Film Editing Taught Me About Screenwriting storyboardresources: Lesson 1: Build In More Images and Actions The page is somewhat forgiving of lengthier dialogue blocks but the editing suite sure is not. There’s probably no better way to see how your dialogue plays than to shoot it and edit it. Most likely, the…
Read moreHOW TO CONFLICT
Never AND. Always OR. Real dramatic conflict gives the protag a choice. This OR That. Success OR Failure. Save the mother OR the child. Capitulate to the antagonist OR get shot. Conflict that has a lot of options is not real conflict. The protagonist is free to save the mother AND the child only after…
Read moreAn Escalation You Can Use: She was Acting
Take a trope character. We’ll use The Distraught Mother for this example. She will weep, insist, fall to pieces. You see a distraught mother, a primal instinct takes over, nothing is important anymore except fixing this problem immediately. Coincidentally, people who get what they want by means of manipulation know this. So do screenwriters. Trope…
Read moreHOW TO CONFLICT
Never AND. Always OR. Real dramatic conflict gives the protag a choice. This OR That. Success OR Failure. Save the mother OR the child. Capitulate to the antagonist OR get shot. Conflict that has a lot of options is not real conflict. The protagonist is free to save the mother AND the child only after…
Read moreLET’S TALK ABOUT OTHER KINDS OF STRUCTURE
There are some. I leave it to Linda Aronson to explain how they work, because I can’t fit it in a gif. Except this one. And I get really down on writers starting out with big ambitions about complicated structure because, frankly, it’s hard enough to do one protagonist and one linear storyline to good…
Read moreREVERSE ENGINEER YOUR REWRITE
Aliens is such a fantastic example of this, you should just watch it five times in a row so you can catch all the little setups and how they are accomplished. Nothing is wasted. Everything does double duty. The power loader is the ultimate in reverse engineered awesomeness, of course, it pays off in well-established…
Read moreEVERYONE KNOWS IT’S WISH FULFILLMENT
I don’t want to embarrass anyone, but It has to be said. Some scripts reek of “Superhero Me”. Not that the protag has super powers, but they’re quick with a comeback, they don’t make mistakes and improbably attractive people hit on them a lot. It’s not dramatic. They have to get knocked all the way…
Read morejackieinspired: Yeah, a fullmetal heart Your screenplay in a nutshell.
Read moreLook how visual jokes work.
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