So, it’s sort of like a puzzle. You want to convey the information that your protag was, let’s say, orphaned at the age of seven and inherited a vast fortune. How do you do it? TRICK QUESTION. You do not want to convey information, you want to create curiosity and emotion and feelings of connection…
Read moreKEEP IT IN YOUR PANTS
Avoid giving your characters speeches about their feelings in the first act. You can show their feelings in what they do, but conversations about their feels and why they feel that way in the setup are boring. There is so much time in the second act to do this work, after we care. It’s not…
Read moreWHAT THE HELL IS SUBTEXT?
Writers of spec screenplays often make the mistake of explaining things to readers, as if there is no other way of being understood. Subtext is the opposite of that. Since the easiest way to demonstrate this is to write two scenes, one with subtext and one without, that is what I did. See if you…
Read moreFIRST WE MUST KILL ALL THE CLUNKERS
It’s late, your optic nerves are shriveling, your laptop is so hot it’s burning your thighs. You need to get from here to there, fast. You’re in a weakened condition. You take a shortcut, you shoehorn a raw and bloody slab of backstory into a conversation where it doesn’t belong so you can move your…
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