Mystery and conflict form the heart of every scene in a story, but it’s especially important in the beginning to grab our attention and foreshadow the main conflict of the story. More importantly, the beginning of the story should summarize the entire story and drop us in the middle of a story that has already […]
The worst movies are where nobody changes. Just watch a lousy James Bond movie like a “A View to a Kill” and you’ll see that he’s still the same in the end as he was in the beginning. At the very least, the hero needs to change emotionally. Yet just making the hero change means […]
The next time you watch a movie, look to see how that movie introduces the hero and villain. Most movies introduce the hero first and then the villain. In “Rocky,” we first see Rocky fighting another boxer in a dingy gym. In “WALL-E,” we first see WALL-E roaming around a desolate Earth surrounded by piles […]
There’s a New Zealand animated film called “Mosely,” which is about beasts of burden that are strong like horses but intelligent and able to talk like a person. Not surprisingly, humans exploit these animals by whipping them and selling off their children similar to what slaves experienced in the Deep South. While this is an […]
Watch a bad James Bond movie and it’s all mindless action. There’s only so much car crashes, gunfire, and explosions you can watch before it gets boring and meaningless. That’s why every great story needs both physical and emotional conflict. Physical conflict is easy to create by just having fights, helicopter crashes, and explosions everywhere. […]
A typical story formula looks like this. A hero pursues a goal and learns from a mentor, gets help from an ally, and with their help, the hero can defeat a villain. This is apparent in most movies like “Star Wars” where Luke wants an adventure, learns from Obi-wan, gets help from Hans Solo, and […]
If you wanted to build a house, would you rush out and buy some wood and bricks, and start slapping the whole thing together? Probably not. What you would do first is plan the design of your house, identify the materials you need, and then draw a plan for how to make that house. Yet […]
Karma is a concept where if you do something bad to others, that same thing will happen to you as punishment. While this can be a soothing belief when other people wrong you, it’s a good technique to use to torture your hero. Every hero has a flaw and that flaw needs to be fixed. […]
“The Hunt” is a horror satire where liberal elitists hunt and kill conservatives for sport. It was originally scheduled for autumn of last year but with also many mass shootings in America, the film got delayed and pushed back to March. Overall, it’s not a great movie, which makes it a perfect candidate to study […]