Pick up any horror novel by authors like Stephen King and turn to any page at random. No matter what paragraph you read, it will almost always hint of horror by just describing the scene. Even an ordinary shopping mall can be full of dark corners and suspicious characters roaming around. Now pick up any […]
Every scene in a screenplay must serve multiple purposes. First, the scene must advance the plot, but far more importantly, every scene must show change. The more drastic the change, the more memorable the scene. To make a scene memorable, the audience must clearly understand four things: What does hero go into scene believing? Why […]
External conflict is easy to see. That’s what you see in trailers where the hero is facing the villain and lots of explosions, gunfire, and hand to hand combat occurs. However what’s far more compelling is internal conflict. That’s where the hero is torn between two equal decisions and doesn’t know which one to choose. […]
All stories are about conflict. A story without any type of conflict is nothing more than a bunch of people sitting around talking. The two types of conflict are external and internal. Bad movies focus only on external conflict (but really bad movies have no conflict at all). External conflict is often exaggerated such as […]
“The Great Wall” was supposed to be a major blockbuster appealing to both Chinese and American audiences. Instead, it turned into a flop. The basic idea is decent: that the Great Wall of China was built to keep monsters out. However, strip away the special effects and monsters and the story is basically weak. The […]
The weakest stories are nothing but external conflict where the hero battles one obstacle after another like a bad karate movie where an endless stream of people keep attacking for no apparent reason. The best stories contain both internal and external conflict. External conflict is what the villain creates to oppose the hero such as […]
Every story is about the hero’s change. To define that change, your hero needs to start with a lie that he or she believes in. This belief is what puts the hero in a dead end situation in the beginning of the story. Then the hero must eventually learn to confront this lie and change […]
If you want to learn how Pixar creates stories, you can watch their free video series at Khan Academy. One crucial element that Pixar focuses on is that action alone is meaningless without emotion. In the first video, Pete Doctor (Inside and Out and Monsters, Inc.) explains how “Monsters, Inc.” evolved. Initially, the story was […]
If you haven’t seen “Get Out,” stop to avoid spoilers. For everyone who has seen “Get Out,” it’s a rare horror film that has received near universal acclaim. That’s because it’s a beautifully crafted horror story that’s perfect to study in case you want to write a horror film of your own. The basic element […]
Practically everyone in Los Angeles is writing a screenplay, yet when you ask these people what their story is about, you don’t often get a clear answer. Instead, you typically get a rambling discourse that describes the action in specific scenes, but a single interesting scene alone won’t make a good movie. What makes a […]