Most novice screenwriters get so focused in telling a story they forget they also have to grab and hold our interest as well. The end result is a bland, dull screenplay that exists solely to feed information to the audience even though the audience has no reason to care. Part of what makes novice screenplays […]
One common novice screenwriting mistake is to dump exposition in the dialogue of characters so they wind up telling each other everything that they already know. This flaw can even be seen in “Vertigo,” Alfred Hitchcock’s film where the hero asks a woman, “Weren’t we engaged once?” Instead of dumping exposition clumsily in dialogue where […]
After spending $90 million dollars, Warner Brothers cancelled the “Batgirl” movie despite the fact that it was in post-production and nearly done. Warner Brothers also cancelled “Scoob!: Holiday Haunt” as well despite sinking so much money into both productions. The reason Warner Brothers cancelled both projects is that they decided they had already lost so […]
Screenwriting is storytelling. Not only should you study screenwriting if you want to increase your storytelling skills, but you should also study other forms of storytelling as well such as oral storytelling, fiction writing in short stories and novels, and musicals. Musicals are mostly stage plays but many musicals have been translated successfully (and unsuccessfully) […]
Far too often, novices write scenes where two people just talk to each other. Even worse, this scene is usually set in a dull setting like a bedroom or inside a car. Whenever you write a scene, focus on telling a story through the environment. Environmental story telling is all about letting the audience infer […]
For a while, Marvel movies got universal acclaim. By studying the highest rated Marvel movies, you can learn the importance of story. By studying the latest Marvel movies, you can see what they’re doing wrong. There are several reasons why the latest Marvel movies are slipping in quality but the number one reason is the […]
Watch the deleted scenes of any movie and you’ll notice why they were deleted. In many cases, these scenes do nothing to support the story. In many cases, they simply repeat information that was already provided in another scene. James Cameron scripts tend to contain lots of deleted scenes. In “Aliens,” there’s an entire early […]