THIS IS YOUR MIDPOINT
Midpoints are a fork in the road. One path offers a false solution, one path offers a true solution. Has your protag grown enough to make a different decision here than he would have made at the beginning? For some awesome, less nutshelly thoughts on midpoints, check out this link. [x]
Read moreTHE PROTAG MAKES BAD DECISIONS
Protags are boring when they don’t screw up their lives in spectacular ways out of pride, fear, insecurity, blind stupidity, selfishness or sheer bloody-mindedness. Bad decisions make good stories.
Read moreWRITING WITHOUT A BEAT SHEET
When you get a great idea and start without developing the bones of the story, you will probably get about thirty pages in before the wheels come off. Which is fine. You can put down your pages and do your outline then. But you still need one, because screenplays are incredibly intricate. Every scene you…
Read moreWHY DO EMOTIONLESS CHARACTERS WORK?
Because they aren’t. Dexter, Spock, Data, Castiel, even poor Bishop in Aliens. Their lack of emotion is complete fiction. They say one thing and act with the pure motivation of children who love absolutely. That’s why they succeed as characters. They recognize that there are human beings who can’t be replaced and behave accordingly. All…
Read moreHOW DO I WRITE MALE CHARACTERS WELL?
There’s no reason that writing male characters should pose a problem for female screenwriters. The differences between us may seem like a gulf that can only be crossed with a bridge of sandwiches, but we have a lot of common ground. When writing male characters, remember: Don’t be shallow. Avoid defining them by how much…
Read moreREVENGE CHARACTERS
CAUTION. When you create a character to settle a score with that bitter teacher or boss from the patriarchy or the douche who screwed the girl you were crushing on, remember that humanizing them is more effective than demonizing them. To really assassinate someone in a revenge character, they can’t be flat on the page…
Read moreABANDON YOUR PRIVILEGE, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE
I’m not prejudiced against young, fit, good-looking white people, they have their own set of specialized problems I can’t relate to, so I wouldn’t presume. But they are only one subset of people. The joy of writing spec scripts for competitions is that you’re not bound by the market. It’s not a prize for the…
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