All conflict is not equal. Outer conflict occurs when the hero fights or confronts other people or obstacles. That may be visually interesting, but physical action by itself is meaningless. What’s far more important is the motivation behind the physical action. By defining your story’s theme, you automatically know your hero’s inner conflict. The theme […]
Study the beginnings and endings of movies and you’ll notice that they match. That means once you know your beginning, you automatically know your end and once you know your end, you automatically know your beginning. Two ways to begin and end a screenplay are: Focus on action. Start with a small conflict that foreshadows […]
Every hero has a fatal flaw. This fatal flaw is what the hero needs to overcome to become a better person by the end. Good movies always show the hero changing into a better person. Bad movies, like “The 355,” do not show the hero changing in any meaningful way, which is what makes them […]
When someone tries to be funny, they often fail miserably. However, when someone just acts naturally but irrationally, that often creates humor. If you’re trying to write a comedy screenplay, start by creating a serious story first. Bad comedies (anything created by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer such as “Disaster Movie”) simply go for cheap […]
Most novices come up with an idea and then write a screenplay based on that idea. However, a good idea is rarely enough. Trying to stretch one good idea into a full-length screenplay inevitably means either writing a screenplay that’s far too short or padding it with irrelevant scenes and plot twists that simply weaken […]
Watch “The 355” to see how Hollywood got an action thriller movie completely wrong. Rather than tell an intriguing, suspenseful story about characters we care about, “The 355” simply jumps from one action scene to another, skipping character development, suspense, and logic just to get us to another meaningless action scene over and over again. […]
One common problem with writing a full-length screenplay is that writers start with a great idea — and run out of ideas by page 50. The problem isn’t that their idea isn’t good. The real problem is that they’re focused solely on that main story idea. For example, ask most people what they think “Die […]