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. If everyone in your script admires how cool the protag is,…
Read moreA truly brilliant piece of visual storytelling. Revealing character? Check. Conflict? Check. Complication? Check. Sitting over coffee dishing backstory is not required when you build a scene this way. Everything you need to know, you can see.
Read moreNotes from a Screenreader: Rethinking Dialogue
nywift: Photo via Go Into the Story. Dialogue is a necessary evil, according to legendary director Fred Zinnemann, and writers of spec scripts should print that out and tack it up over their monitors. It is the polar opposite of telling your story visually. So why do you need it at all? As director Kelly…
Read moreTHE OPENING IMAGE IS ORIGINAL
TONE SHIFT
Radical tone shift is disorienting. If you find your voice halfway through, dedicate a rewrite to making the first half tonally complementary.
Read moreTHE OPENING IMAGE IS ORIGINAL
The Cats I Have Seen Saved
Found footage of my cat. Fade out. Poe’s Law infers that there is no way for me to know what the pie chart looks like for Ironic Cat-Saving vs. The Book Said to Save a Cat on This Page vs. Cats Saved by Coincidence vs. Other, but it is not an SRS I’m talking about….
Read moreOVERWRITTEN DIALOGUE
CONFLICT: CATS EDITION
LOW CONFLICT BETTER CONFLICT ACTUAL CONFLICT
Read moreHow to dialogue. How to character. This does not happen in an idle discussion as a philosophical observation, it happens in a high conflict scene of personal and professional confrontation.
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