Every story is about conflict. Without conflict, you have no story. Watching a character struggle to achieve a goal is what makes any story interesting. However, not all conflict is equal. If a person wants to find love, it’s easy to throw in completely irrelevant conflict such as Godzilla suddenly tearing up a town or […]

Any time you watch a mediocre or bad movie, look for a theme. You probably won’t find one and that’s the root cause of bad stories right there. Without a theme, stories risk drifting with no sense of direction or focus. Typically the screenwriter will simply write a bunch of disjointed scenes that may look […]

What makes a good comedy? Some people might think funny actors or funny scenes, but study any great comedy movie and you’ll find that the one common element is death. Laughter is often a reaction to adversity and there’s nothing scarier than death. That’s why great comedies often have death at the heart of their […]

It’s easy to focus on your hero and create a story solely around the hero’s actions. However if you do that, you’ll risk creating a one-dimensional story because any characters the hero meets during the course of the story will have no goals of their own to pursue. This will result in a flat story […]

Every hero has two goals. The first goal is the most obvious one. The second goal is the real goal the hero needs, which the hero typically isn’t aware of until others point it out to him or her. Generally the hero chases after a superficial, physical goal while slowly realizing that he or she […]

Divide every story in half. In the first half (Acts I and IIa), everything appears to be going according to plan. Then in the second half (Acts IIb and III), something different happens that makes things worse. In “Spiderman: Far From Home,” the first half is about Spiderman trying to avoid becoming a superhero because […]

The quickest way to write a bad screenplay is to have multiple character who either exist solely to help the hero or to have multiple characters pursuing wildly different goals. If other characters exist solely to help the hero, they’ll feel flat and one-dimensional. If other characters pursue wildly different goals, the entire story will […]

Watch episodes of the original Twilight Zone series that ran from 1959 to 1964. Because TV show budgets were limited, they couldn’t afford to travel to exotic locations or use expensive special effects. Instead, they had to rely on being creative within the restricted budget and space available on the studio lot. Creativity is always […]