In every good story, the beginning poses a question that finally gets answered in the end. Throughout that entire story, that initial question remains unanswered. The hero’s pursuit of this answer drives the entire story. In “Tangled,” the hero (Rapunzel) has a goal to see the floating lanterns that she sees every year on her […]
Every bad or mediocre movie starts off with a good idea. In the case of “65,” the idea is that a man is stranded on Earth 65 million years ago and must survive against dinosaurs until he can get to his rescue ship. So the main idea of “65” is no different than “Jurassic Park,” […]
Watch any mediocre movie and chances are good the hero beats the villain and the story ends. Just defeating the villain is never enough. What the hero must really do is change internally. That means the hero must finally abandon his or her limiting belief and embrace a more empowering belief instead. Put another way, […]
The whole purpose of a scene is to change your hero’s life in some way. Think of the opening scene in “Thelma and Louise” where the two women are planning to take off for the weekend without telling their husband or boyfriend where they’re going. Even though this is such a simple scene, it sets […]
Writing a story isn’t easy. However, there’s a huge difference between novice writers and experienced writers. Experienced writers know what makes stories work from the beginning all the way to the end. Even if they don’t outline their entire story ahead of time, experienced writers subconsciously know the structure of stories so they can write […]
One huge mistake many novices make is writing scenes that serve no purpose but to provide information about the story. Boring. The real purpose of every scene is to grab and hold our attention. To do that, scenes must show conflict. On the simplest level, conflict can occur between two people fighting such as in […]
Many writers try to come up with totally original ideas for a story. That’s usually a waste of time because there re really no original plots; just original ways to tell the same plot. The next time you get stuck for an idea, try borrowing an idea from another story. If you saw “John Wick: […]