When most people come up with a story, they focus on the high-concept idea. In “Bumblebee,” the latest Transformers movie, that high-concept could be what would happen if one of the hero Transformer robots has to hide on Earth to protect it against the bad guys (Decepticons)? In a typical “Transformers” movie, that would be […]
The YA (Young Adult) genre has been hot ever since the success of “The Hunger Games” and “Twilight.” However, since then, there have been many flops and outright disappointing movies. The big problem is simply how the typical YA novel is structured. The YA genre follows two criteria. First, it needs a love triangle such […]
The quickest way to make a boring story is to forget the number rule of storytelling: the hero must be proactive. That means whatever happens, the hero must take steps to make things happen. In good movies, the hero is always in control of his destiny. He or she may not know what to expect, […]
One of the latest box office bombs of 2018 is “Mortal Engines.” The movie is based on a science fiction novel about cites that move on giant wheels and dismantle other cities for resources. What makes “Mortal Engines” a failure is that it focuses too much on action and special effects while creating a thin […]
Break a two hour screenplay into four, 30-minute segments and you get the following: Act I – Introduce the hero’s emotional dream Act IIa – Show the hero pursuing a goal and achieving success Act IIb – Show the hero struggling to hold on to his or her dream Act III – Show the hero […]
Strip away the emotional change in a hero and you wind up with a story heavy on action but empty of feeling, and that’s the recipe for a boring movie. Every great story starts with an emotional journey and that emotional journey must drive the entire story where the action simply makes achieving that emotional […]
Conflict is the heart of every story and what creates conflict are obstacles. The purpose of any obstacle is to keep characters from achieving their goals. The four types of obstacles include: Physical Social Personal Internal Physical obstacles are the simplest and simply involve an inanimate object getting in the character’s way. What makes physical […]
There’s a huge difference between plot and story. Plot is what happens and this is easy to visualize in a pitch such as “a lone cop must battle an army of terrorists in a skyscraper” (“Die Hard”) or “a man is falsely accused of being a spy and must survive and find out what’s going […]
In too many cases, novice screenwriters write dialogue that explains too much. You can see this in bad movies when the villain tells the hero (and the audience) his or her entire plans. This monologue typically serves no other purpose than exposition so it’s dull. What dialogue needs to do is provide something new that […]
Every story is about emotional change. If a story lacks emotional change, it will likely be dull and boring. People aren’t watching “The Spy Who Dumped Me” multiple times but they will watch movies like “Titanic” or “Forrest Gump” multiple times. That’s because bad movies focus only on action while great movies focus on action […]