There’s a saying that people often can’t see the forest for the trees. This means focusing too much on details that you can’t see the big picture. That’s typically how most people write a screenplay and that’s why there are so many disjointed screenplays turned into disjointed and unsatisfying movies. When you focus only on […]
There’s a huge difference between a good movie and a bad one. In a good movie, all the parts work together. In a bad movie, nothing seems related or connected in anyway as if the director simply tried to make each scene as amusing as possible without regard to what happened before or what will […]
Here’s how Hollywood thinks they can make a movie better: Add more special effects Hire more A-list stars Hire a “hot” director Hire more writers to work on the screenplay While none of these techniques alone can sink a screenplay, they completely miss the real problem on why so many screenplays fail. It’s because the […]
In every story, the hero has something at stake and the story is about whether the hero will succeed or not. In most cases, we know the hero will succeed; we just don’t know how, and that’s what keeps us watching. What keeps us in suspense is that the hero’s worse fears must be realized […]
In a good song, the melody gets repeated multiple times in different ways. Stories are similar. Study any good movie and you’ll find that it really tells only one story, but it does so in multiple ways. For example, “Black Klansman” is a movie based on a true story where a black police officer infiltrated […]
People enjoy watching movies to escape their ordinary lives, but sometimes ordinary lives can be the most fascinating way to escape. The goal isn’t to leap into a fantasy world altogether such as one populated by Harry Potter magicians or superheroes. Instead, movies about ordinary life can help explain life and show how to go […]
The key to writing an interesting story is to give goals to all your main characters. The weakest type of story is where the hero has a goal but nobody else has a goal so the villain exists solely to get in the way of the hero, which creates a dull, phony, and forced conflict. […]
There’s a reason why many novels don’t translate well into movies. It’s because of the fundamental nature of novels. In a novel, the main goal is to keep the reader turning pages and one technique to do that is to keep introducing something new and different all the time. The problem with this approach is […]