The biggest battle is never between the hero and the villain. Bad movies make this mistake all the time and think that if the battle between the hero and villain contains more explosions, gunfire, and action, then the ending will be more exciting. That’s rarely the case. What makes the final battle between the hero […]

There’s nothing scarier than a villain you admire. If you make a villain totally evil, it’s easy to hate him, but if you make the villain likable, now you may still hate him (or her), but you also can’t help but admire the villain. When you like the villain, it makes the eventual conflict between […]

In every story, there’s an initial problem that the hero wants to solve. If that’s the only problem in your story, you’ve got a dull story. What you need isn’t just one big problem, but three big problems. Think of “The Hunger Games.” First Katniss’s problem is trying to protect her little sister from the […]

Pixar usually makes decent movies. Yet one of their latest movies, “The Good Dinosaur,” had a troubled history. Apparently Pixar animated most of the film and hired actors to voice different characters, only to discover that the story wasn’t working. Why Pixar would go through that much effort and expense to create a half-formed story, only […]

To help you visualize your story, think of how your story might look as a comic book. Doing this will force you to focus more on the visual aspects of your story and less on dialogue. In “The Art of Comic Book Writing,” you can learn how comic book writers visualize a story. Look at […]

Every scene is one of many building blocks to create your overall story. Just as a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, a screenplay will only be as strong as your weakest scene. When rewriting, always look at each scene individually and find ways to make it stronger. First, look at the […]

There’s a reason why characters speak and it’s never to give out information to the audience, although that’s the side effect. The main reason characters speak is so they can get what they want. Dialogue typically serves three functions: To provide information to the audience To help the character get what they want To emphasize […]

All the action in the world means nothing if nobody cares about your hero. So how do you make your hero sympathetic? You do it in three steps. First, make the hero likable. Second, give the hero a goal the audience can relate to. Third, let the audience experience the hero’s change as the hero […]

Your hero usually starts off as a nobody and winds up as someone special in the end. You can see this transition from zero to hero in most Disney animated films. In “Tangled,” the hero starts off thinking she’s just an ordinary girl stuck in a tower. Only later does she learn that she’s actually […]

Watch the first 15 minutes of any movie and then stop. If the story is structured correctly, you should have hints of how the movie will ultimately end. That’s because the beginning must always mirror the ending. That means the beginning must subtly hint how the end will finally occur. To do this, the beginning […]