plotless-monster: It’s no surprise when people get educated, they don’t go back to the places they came from. (namely the small poor towns where people are batshit and hold a primitive mindset) Here’s another universal theme.

Read more

50 Shades of You Can’t Argue with the Dollar Vote

So I’m as mad as anyone that this bad art spoke to a hundred million people, but I also find it pointless to just rage against it as stupid and wrong when it actually works as a story for so many people, most of whom are women. So I kept looking at it from every…

Read more

Who’s Your Audience?

Tone + Genre + Story + Universal Message = Target Audience The first thing you decide is what story you want to tell, and the second thing to decide is who you want to tell it to. Really, it will make so many of your choices so much simpler. You can’t please everyone, but you…

Read more

UNIVERSAL MESSAGES

Universal messages are the comfort food of film language. They are the  reason you will do better with a story about love fixing all your problems than a bully beating you to death for standing up to them. A lot of writers discuss this issue as a moral quandary about selling out. It isn’t. Casablanca succeeds…

Read more