The other day I watched the second James Bond movie, “From Russia with Love.” The story isn’t bad but the pacing is much slower than today’s movies. There’s one scene where James Bond checks into a hotel room and spends a few minutes peeking behind the pictures to make sure there isn’t a hidden camera […]

I heard an interesting interview with the original writers of “Toy Story.” The writers knew at the end that they wanted Woody, the hero, to realize that he could co-exist with Buzz Lightyear, so they decided that in order for Woody to change into a nice guy, he had to start off as a selfish […]

How do you keep a story from slowing down and dragging? Watch a bad movie like “Grandmaster” and you’ll likely fall asleep. Watch a long movie like “Schindler’s List” and you’ll likely not even notice the time has gone by so quickly. The two keys to keep your story moving at all times is Anticipation […]

When you see a good movie, it can inspire you to achieve the same goal, but it can also intimidate you as a novice screenwriter. However, when you watch a bad movie, it can motivate you to do better. Now when you compare a good movie with a bad movie, you can better see what […]

Watch a movie based on a book and you can see the different changes the movie had to make to tell the same story as the book. Much of the action of a novel takes place in the reader’s imagination, so something as simple as deciding what type of coffee to buy could be an […]

How do you grab an audience’s attention and hold it? Show them conflict and mystery. Conflict implies a battle between two people while a mystery makes you want to know what’s happening so you’ll stick around to see more. The beginning of every movie needs this dual combination of conflict and mystery. There’s an obscure […]

What makes a movie drag is that nothing important seems to be going on, there’s no reason for anyone to do anything, and nothing seems connected. To hold and maintain the audience’s attention, you need to keep raising the stakes for the hero in three areas. First, the hero must begin stuck in a dead […]

As soon as possible in Act I, but definitely before Act I ends, you must pose three Big Questions: What is the villain trying to do? Initially, this will be a mystery but as your story unfolds, this will become clearer. What does the hero want emotionally? This can be something abstract. What does the […]

The beginning of your story should create a Big Question in the minds of your audience as they try to figure out what’s happening. Then as they try to figure out what’s happening, you throw in even more mystery. Finally, you explain what’s going on. Then you resolve the problem you’ve created for your hero, […]