I was stuck at my doctor’s today for half an hour, and a soap opera was on the television. It immediately struck me that most spec features are written exactly this way. Talking. Doing massive exposition. No visuals, just people saying “dramatic” things. Explaining things to each other. Watch a soap opera for an hour….
Read moreME LISTENING TO CONVOLUTED BACKSTORY
Convoluted backstory feels right to the writer, but it’s bad. Good backstory is concise, gaspworthy gossip. Not then-he-said, but-she-thought stuff that could barely keep a therapist awake.
Read more“IT COULD BE A GREAT OPPORTUNITY FOR YOU”
for you, unclesean
Read moreWE DO NOT DISCUSS THE CRANE
YET ANOTHER FEMALE CHARACTER WHO IS 25 AND HOT AS HELL BUT IN A GIRL NEXT DOOR WAY WHO LOOKS PERFECT WITHOUT MAKEUP IN JEANS AND AN OLD TEE
Just the part every single actress has been praying for.
Read moreHeadscratching Cliches: Part One
This is how large a spilled cup of coffee looms in the first ten pages of spec scripts. It’s right up there with running late for work and getting dumped. I do not know what a spilled cup of coffee is supposed to convey about a character or their situation. It is utterly meaningless. It…
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 moreSTRONG EMOTIONS MAKE STRONG SCRIPTS
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…
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