If you like horror, then write horror screenplays. The main and most crucial element of horror is isolation. From a story telling standpoint, isolation forces the characters to confront the villain with limited resources in a confined area where they can’t escape. From a production standpoint, isolation means there’s a minimal amount of set locations […]
Once you have a good idea for a story, you have to give it a structure. The simplest structure is to define the beginning and the end where the beginning poses a question and the end answers that question. For example, in “10 Cloverfield Lane,” the beginning question is whether the hero will get out […]
Pause any good movie near the middle of its running time and that’s where you can find the False Victory. This is the point where the hero achieves a major victory that seems important, but still fails to solve the real problem. More importantly, the False Victory is set up at the end of the […]
Screenwriters typically break a screenplay into three Acts, but it’s actually more accurate to divide a movie into four Acts as follows: Act I — Exposition Act IIa — Positive rising action Act IIb — Negative rising action Act III – Climax With four Acts, each Act lasts approximately 30 minutes so you have a […]
The main reason the final Act of every screenplay must be the most exciting part of the entire story is because this is where we get to see who wins in the end. If the hero wins, then the villain loses. If the villain wins, then the hero loses. This must be clear cut so […]
Watch a bad movie and one glaring problem is that most of the main characters don’t change emotionally. They often don’t have an emotional goal so they simply go through lots of action that leads nowhere. Yet if you watch a good movie, you’ll see that action is secondary to creating emotional change in the […]
There’s a reason why most stories fall into specific types of genres. That’s because they emphasize a certain emotion that people want to experience such as: Horror — fear Comedy — laughter Romance — love Action — excitement Mystery — intellectual challenge deciphering clues Drama — understanding about some aspect of life A horror movie […]
The basis for any story is change. At the very least, the hero must change and become someone better (or worse as in tragedies) than they were in the beginning. Most movies end on a happy note when the hero changes for the better, but tragedies end on a sad note when the hero fails […]
In every story, either the hero or the villain needs a clear goal to pursue from beginning to end. Without a clear goal, a story risks wandering off track and losing focus, which means a mediocre story at best. In “Star Wars,” Darth Vader (the villain) has a clear goal from start to finish, which […]
The last thing anyone remembers from most movies is the ending. That’s why the ending is always the most spectacular battle possible. The ending needs to be big, needs to be personal, and needs to threaten someone the hero loves. Paradoxically, the ending isn’t always the biggest battle. In “Star Wars,” the ending is the biggest […]