Good movies always tell one story. Any subplots basically echo that one story in different ways. By telling one story in multiple ways, the overall experience can be stronger and emotionally satisfying. In “How to Train Your Dragon 3,” the hero is being pushed into marrying his girlfriend. To echo this story, the hero’s dragon […]
Screenplays are highly structured because they have a limited amount of time to tell a story. While novels can go off on tangents, screenplays (and stage plays) must stay focused on telling a single story. When writing a screenplay, follow the general rule that every 15 minutes (in a two hour movie), the hero pursues […]
Many screenwriters create a longline that summarizes the basics of the story in one or two sentences. This longline can be used to pitch an idea to others to get their interest. For example, “Star Wars” was pitched as a a space opera like Flash Gordon. “Under Siege” was pitched as “Die Hard” on a […]
What novice screenwriters typically do is start with the bare bones of an idea and then immediately start writing. This inevitably leads to a screenplay that runs out of ideas after less than 30 pages. At that point, the screenwriter is stuck and the story likely goes nowhere. The solution to this problem is to […]
If you listen to music, you’ll notice every good song repeats parts over and over again. Stories are the same way. What’s deceptive about story telling is that every story really tells one story from different points of view. This creates a unified and rich story that creates a fully satisfying emotional experience in the […]
Take a two hour movie and divide it into equal 30-minute segments and you have four acts. Overall, you always have a single goal posed at the beginning of the story that’s finally answered in the end. Often times this initial question is easily buried behind the main action of the story. For example in […]
Why do you like watching old movies that you’ve already seen and know the plot by heart? It’s not to see special effects or watch A-list actors and directors work. It’s because you love the story and want to experience it emotionally all over again. Nobody watches a lousy movie over and over again, but […]
Every story has two major goals. The outer goal is what’s defined in Act I and resolved in Act III. The inner goal is what’s defined in Act II and often resolved by the end of Act IIb or the beginning of Act III. In “Legally Blonde,” the outer goal is that the hero wants […]
Throughout the story, the hero gradually changes. In Act I, the hero starts changing from someone trapped in a dead end life of their own making to someone pursuing a physical goal (Symbol of Hope) that promises to give the hero an emotional dream. The hero hasn’t changed emotionally yet, but is in the process […]