Right from the start, you have to define what your hero wants. Then in the end, you have to answer the question whether the hero gets what he or she wants. Define this initial question and answer and you know the rough outline of how your story begins and ends. In “Die Hard,” the hero […]
Every movie follows a specific genre. In most cases, a movie actually follows two genres where one genre defines the story and the second genre defines how that story is told. In “Anna and the Apocalypse,” the main genre is a horror story about a zombie apocalypse that takes over a small English town. The […]
Musicals tells story through song. In good musicals, just by listening to each song, you can understand what the hero wants, what the villain wants, and what’s happening in the story. Listen to the soundtrack for Disney’s 1991 “Beauty and the Beast” and you’ll be able to follow the story with each song like this: […]
Every scene in a screenplay must have a purpose. To make a scene interesting, it must advance the story and to do that, it must either setup an idea or pay off a previous setup. For example, in “Die Hard,” the initial scene introduces the hero afraid of flying. That’s when a fellow passenger suggests […]
“Mary Poppins Returns” is nowhere near the classic that the original “Mary Poppins” was, but it strives mightily anyway. One huge difference between the two movies is the villain. In “Mary Poppins,” the struggle is really between Mr Bank’s stubborn attitude towards the way he treats children and his eventual change to realize he needs […]
In Act I, which represents the first 30 minutes of a typical 120-minute screenplay, the hero is stuck in a dead end life but extremely reluctant to leave it. That’s why Act I needs two life-changing events that force the hero to leave the dead end life and leap into a new world. The first […]
Your hero must have a goal that starts the story moving forward. As long as the hero continues pursuing this initial goal, then the story constantly feels like it’s getting closer. Without a clear initial goal, audiences have no idea what any action means and thus the story bogs down. To define this initial goal, […]
Look at the difference between a mediocre story and a great one. A mediocre story drags along with nothing much happening. On the other hand, a great story holds your attention and never lets it go. In screenplays the way to do this is to keep introducing one or more life-changing events in the hero’s […]
When many novices get an idea for a story, they immediately rush to write the screenplay. This inevitably winds up creating a story that runs out of ideas after several pages. If the screenwriter has enough ideas, he or she might write up to 40 pages before finding themselves in a dead end. The problem […]
The biggest reason movies flop is because the screenplay focuses too much on physical action while ignoring the emotional change that makes any story worthwhile. “Jaws” was never about a man-eating shark but about the sheriff trying to redeem himself after opening the beaches and letting a boy get killed by the shark. Now he […]