Love and survival are such simple goals that it’s easy for anyone, regardless of race, age, sex, culture, or environment, to relate to these problems. You need both in your story to make it compelling. Every good movie has a clear cut goal for the hero that involves love or survival. In a horror film, […]
Tribal cultures offer startlingly similar rituals in raising a boy to become a man. These rituals are similar to what your hero must go through to grow and change. While listening to the radio, I heard a man explaining how tribal cultures all have a ritual to help transition boys from childhood into manhood. The […]
Too many people focus on creating a dazzling plot loaded with action, special effects, gunfire, and explosions. Yet that’s not always the formula for success. There’s an odd movie out right now that’s grabbing critical acclaim. This movie is called “The King’s Speech.” The title alone tells you briefly what the story is about, but […]
Every story needs exposition so the audience knows who the story is about, what the hero wants, where the story takes place, and what’s happening. That’s easy to do in modern day films, but put that in the past or the future and you have big exposition problems. Most movies put their stories in the […]
Just as there are elements that every successful movie tends to use, so there are the same elements that every lousy movie tends to use. Avoid these tendencies of a lousy movie and you can avoid writing a lousy movie yourself. In the past year, my favorite bad movies have been “Tron Legacy,” “G-Force,” “The […]