One of the biggest mistakes novices make when writing a screenplay is that they don’t give their characters any type of history. Study every good movie and you’ll notice that every story is about the main characters overcoming a problem from the past. In most movies, the hero overcomes problems from the past but sometimes […]
A one-trick pony is something that only has a single redeeming feature. The problem is that an entire movie needs more than a single interesting feature. If a movie has nothing but a single compelling idea, it likely won’t make a good movie. Almost every movie seems like a one-trick pony but it’s not. “Star […]
In the old days, bad stage plays used to have a maid and a butler talk about the problems of the main characters. This dialogue was meant solely to tell the audience who the main characters were and what they want. Once the maid and butler finished their dialogue, they were never seen again. Such […]
One of the latest flops at the box office is “King Arthur.” If you watch the movie, you’ll notice one huge problem: you never get to emotionally experience what the main characters are going through. One general rule of writing is to show, not tell. In fiction such as short stories and novels, that rule […]
Every story begins with the villain failing to achieve a goal. Sometimes this failure is because something happens but sometimes this failure is just because the villain is just starting to pursue a goal. In “Star Wars,” Darth Vader fails to capture the stolen Death Star plans. In “Die Hard,” Hans the terrorist leader just […]
The best way to write a story is to stay focused. Every story falls into a specific genre such as: Comedy – laughter Horror – fear Action – excitement Mystery – intellectual challenge Romance – love Drama – revelation about life Identify the main genre of your story and that can focus your story so […]
You can structure a typical 120-minute movie into four acts of 30-minute increments like this: Act I — 0 – 30 minutes Act IIa — 30 – 60 minutes Act IIb — 60 – 90 minutes Act III — 90 – 120 minutes Of course, not all movies are exactly 120 minutes but the basic idea is to divide […]
Your hero needs to gradually change over the course of the story. In Act I, you must introduce the hero’s main problem. Then in Act III, you must solve your hero’s problem. Just by defining the beginning and end of your hero’s life, you can clearly define whether your hero has changed or not. Once […]
One of the more popular dystopian youth novels is “The 5th Wave” by Rick Yancey. Yet one of the worst dystopian youth movies was also “The 5th Wave.” How did Hollywood botch a perfectly good book and create a boring movie? If you’ve read the book and watched the movie, you can see several glaring […]
In the old days of Victorian-style stage plays, a butler and maid would come on stage and set a table while chatting among themselves about the problems of the main characters. This was purely to provide exposition on what the story was about and who was involved. Then the butler and maid would disappear, never […]