Every story must start with a goal and end by showing whether the hero got that goal or not. Yet most people write a story from the beginning but it can be more useful to start at the end. By working backwards from the end, you’ll know exactly how the story is going to end. […]
The two most crucial parts of your screenplay is the beginning and the end. The beginning must grab our attention right away and the end must satisfy the initial question posed in the beginning. That means the beginning and end must work together to tell a complete story. Watch a popular movie like “The Matrix” […]
Dialogue is always meant to enhance what we see, not replace it. Don’t use dialogue to explain everything to the audience because it comes across as phony and contrived, like villains explaining their entire plan to the hero at the end, which becomes a boring monologue where nothing happens. Any time there’s dialogue, look for […]
One way to make any story stronger is to add symbolism. A symbol simply represents a prominent idea in the story. “Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter” is about a Japanese woman who lives a lonely, dead end life and yearns to get out of it. To symbolize her feeling of being trapped, she owns a pet […]
The biggest mistake writers make is to start writing a scene before they understand the structure of that scene. The end result is a weak, diluted, placid scene that excites nobody. The characters feel one-dimensional, the dialogue sounds phony and forced, and the entire direction of the scene feels aimless and rudderless. The key […]
One of the biggest problems writers face when creating a story is how to get started. The worst way to get started is to start writing because this will guarantee you’ll wind up writing pages of words that you’ll need to throw away later. A far better solution is to start by defining the beginning […]
Watch a great movie and within the first few minutes, it’s grabbed your attention and introduced an unresolved problem. In “Star Wars,” the unresolved problem is why is Darth Vader’s starship attacking Princess Leia’s starship? In “The Hunger Games,” the unresolved problem is why is the hero’s little sister so terrified of the Hunger Games […]
Every story defines an initial, unresolved problem for the hero that will never get resolved until near the end. The story’s theme then defines the root of this initial, unresolved problem. In “Back to the Future,” the hero’s initial, unresolved problem is that he lacks confidence in himself. Thus the theme is that you can […]