Here’s the biggest mistake writers make when telling a story. They think a story should focus on a hero overcoming a problem in pursuit of a goal. Wrong. The real purpose of a story is to grab and hold someone’s attention from start to finish. If you can’t grab and hold someone’s attention, it doesn’t […]

This is a huge mistake most writers make. When they try to think up a story, they focus on the external plot and action such as saying, “My story is about a woman forced to rob banks so she can support her two children after she loses her job.” Although that sentence or log line […]

Many writers have trouble writing dialogue. One reason is that they rely on dialogue to dump information on the audience. This results in stilted, unnatural dialogue that sounds like two people vomiting up information rather than actually engaging in a conversation. Besides dumping exposition on the audience, a second reason writers have trouble writing dialogue […]

The biggest mistake novice writers make is they try to tell a story. That usually means they dump globs of information on the audience, characters speak unnaturally, and there’s little conflict or action because everyone is too busy providing exposition over and over again. Instead of trying to tell a story, writers should focus on […]

There’s talk that people are getting tired of seeing superhero movies. That’s partially true but the real problem is that so many superhero movies aren’t that interesting because they fail to stay focused on the main character. “The Flash” would sound like it would be about the Flash, but in reality, large chunks of the […]

The “Barbie” movie has not only made millions of dollars, but it’s been critical acclaimed as well. What’s the secret? The secret isn’t that people want to see a movie about a toy doll but that every movie needs to be about something other than what you see. When a movie just shows you lots […]