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 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
BECHDELLING 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…
Read moreWHAT IS SO IMPORTANT ABOUT THE STUPID FLAW?
Drama is driven by conflict, and conflict is driven by needs. Needs spring from the cavernous emptiness that echoes inside us all. Flaws force people into bad decisions, down the wrong path, into dead ends. Stories exist to show that that damage is undoable. Success is possible, happiness attainable. You take a pastry chef whose…
Read moreNotes From a Screenreader: Mamet-ize it
nywift: Photo via Go Into the Story. THIS is the supreme last word on screenwriting from David Mamet. It is a memo from Mamet to his writing staff on The Unit, which you may or may not recall ran for 69 episodes between 2006 and 2009. It is glorious, true, funny, useful and brilliant. It’s not…
Read moreGAME OF THRONES IS DIFFERENT
Your script is about one person who wants one thing. There isn’t time to fully develop every possibility in your script, you have to be utterly bloodthirsty about what you cut out.
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