Before you start writing anything, take a moment to make sure your story has an interesting dilemma. An interesting dilemma forces the hero to choose between two choices so the story is really about which choice will the hero choose? “Eye in the Sky” is about British and American forces tracking terrorists in Kenya. Initially […]
The way to tell an interesting story is to use a four-part story structure like this: Problem occurs Solution found Bigger problem occurs New solution found This four-part story structure can work in defining the entire story, a single Act, or just a single scene. For example, “Star Wars” looks like this with a four-part […]
When author Michael Blake wrote the screenplay “Dances with Wolves,” nobody in Hollywood cared. So Michael Blake rewrote his screenplay as a novel and got it published. Now as a published novel, suddenly Hollywood was interested in “Dances with Wolves”. Best of all, as a published novel, “Dances with Wolves” already laid out the story […]
Every story needs a hero. In novels, you can have multiple heroes but in movies, you need one hero but you can have multiple characters with goals of their own. In “Avengers: Endgame,” the main hero is Ironman, but the other main characters are the Hulk, Black Widow, Hawkeye, and Captain America. Yet the real […]
It’s easy to come up with lots of interesting ideas. It’s much harder to take those good ideas and turn them into a story with a plot. One way to help turn a good idea into a plot is to identify the People, Places, and Things that are absolutely necessary in your story. For example, […]
Every story needs certain people, places, and things. People represent the people the hero needs for help. In “The Karate Kid,” the hero needs a karate instructor. It would be boring if he just walked up to the karate instructor, asked for lessons, and got them. Instead, the hero is actually repelled by the karate […]
Movies immerse us in a world that seems as real as our own. However, the one sure way to shatter this immersive experience is to give your characters illogical motivates for doing anything. The moment the audience can’t understand the motivation of a character, they’ll lose interest and sympathy with that character. Think of great […]
In novels, the reader experiences what the characters go through and that’s what makes a good novel compelling to read. Pick up any novel by Stephen King, John Grisham, Dan Brown, or Toni Morrison and the text will focus on sensory details (sight, touch, taste, smell, sound) and emotional feelings (anger, happiness, confusion, doubt, love, […]
One common problem with novice screenwriters is that their screenplay contains a handful of interesting scenes. Then to get the characters from one interesting scene to another, the screenplay contains lots of dull, boring scenes that exist solely to provide information tot he audience. Don’t do this. Think of every scene as a mini-story. Every […]
Character names are important because they define who that person is. Luke Skywalker sounds far more descriptive than Luke Smith. The basic rule for creating character names is to avoid names that sound too similar such as Sam, Sue, and Sal. You want distinctive names to make it easy to tell who’s talking at any […]