Surprise is the key to holding your audience’s attention. That means you need to entice the audience with what appears to be the story, then surprise them halfway through by suddenly revealing the real story behind the initial story. The initial story is often something we don’t quite understand, but we think we know what’s […]
Every character, especially the hero, has two goals driven by the mind and the heart. The mind tells the character what he or she wants in the physical world. The heart is what the character really needs. For example in “Star Wars,” Luke’s mind tells him he needs to get off his uncle’s farm and […]
The most common mistake in writing dialogue is making every character sound alike. The second most common mistake is making dialogue boring. So to fix both problems, try one of these techniques. First, word processors (either ordinary ones like Microsoft Word or specialized ones like Final Draft) make it easy to search and replace text, […]
Active heroes are responsible for their own fate. That means they take action to put themselves in dire situations, but then take more action to get themselves out of those same dire situations. Passive heroes let circumstances happen to them and then they get out of those dire situations by waiting for someone else to […]
Every scene must be interesting or else you risk losing your audience. A dull scene can wreck the best story so it’s important to make every scene as compelling as possible. To make a scene interesting, focus on three elements: Choose risk over safety Choose fancy over plain Choose unusual over the ordinary What’s more […]
Fractals are mathematical images that are composed of identical images that form much larger images. Stories are the same way. The overall story has a goal and each Act has a goal as well. Digging deeper, each scene has a goal too. By constantly focusing on telling mini-stories that make up a larger story, you […]
Ever since “The Hunger Games” came out and become a worldwide phenomena, Hollywood has been trying to duplicate that success over and over again with dismal results. The problem is simply the story structure of the typical YA (Young Adult) novel that made “The Hunger Games” the exception rather than the rule. The basic structure […]
Every scene needs conflict. To enhance conflict or to make a scene more visually interesting if there’s little conflict, use contrast. Contrast makes everything appear more visible such as white letters against a black background or red letters against a white background. In the world of graphic design, contrast appears through creating light and dark […]
To make any story interesting, you need conflict. However, bad movies simply toss all types of conflict in a story, most of which makes no sense but provides visual eye-candy with special effects, car crashes, and gunfire. The idea is that if the conflict looks interesting, it will make the overall story interesting. Wrong. Random, […]
The horror genre is the easiest to study for emotional impact because horror movies strive to create fear and horror in the minds of the audience. Romance stories are also easy to study because they strive to create love and happiness in the minds of the audience. Of course, all types of stories need to […]