There are some reasons to set your scene in a restaurant, coffee shop or cafe. But Quentin Tarantino has really raised the bar on that choice. So if you are thinking of setting your scene in an eatery where some people can sit and talk and maybe there’s a cameo for a comedic waiter, you…
Read moreJEEEEZ
I’m not asking you to make every story you write a thoughtful feminist treatise, just that you don’t keep writing like you don’t know what year it is and you don’t know what’s going on.
Read moreA Toast For Screenwriters
May your protag be active, your plot blithely unfold, may your hook make you famous once your story is sold. Sláinte.
Read moreOutlines are the last resource of bad fiction writers who wish to God they were writing masters’ theses. Stephen King (via writingquotes) Accurate only in the world of Stephen King.
Read moreKnow Your Cliche #1
The (one) female character is subtly beautiful, even though she is – Without makeup. In old jeans and a ratty tee-shirt. Unaware of it. Covered in mud. Foaming at the mouth. Shedding her bony exoskeleton.
Read moreof-spaceandstars: so like how do you stop writing utter trash ??? you never do. you just rewrite it.
Read moreHow to Rewrite Effectively
Statistically, you should be packing twice as much story into your pages. When you rewrite, look for scenes that accomplish only one thing, for instance, showing that one character doesn’t like another one. Now. Take that scene and snuggle it down into another scene that accomplishes something else, for instance, the protagonist’s final challenge related…
Read moreThe number one note filmmakers get from distributors when trying to sell their films is “Cut ten minutes out of the first act.” (I heard it about the horror feature I produced last year, and the distributors were right.) It’s MUCH easier to cut the pages than it is to cut the footage. michael2h in…
Read moreWhat’s wrong with my idea?
annerocious: Statistically, you have a good setup, but you don’t enter your second act with… a) a protagonist who needs something very important b) a force bent on preventing them c) a series of visual conflicts between them that d) culminates in a final, larger conflict that determines the winner
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