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Good movies always tell one story. Any subplots basically echo that one story in different ways. By telling one...

Screenplays are highly structured because they have a limited amount of time to tell a story. While novels can...

Many screenwriters create a longline that summarizes the basics of the story in one or two sentences. This longline...

What novice screenwriters typically do is start with the bare bones of an idea and then immediately start writing....

If you listen to music, you’ll notice every good song repeats parts over and over again. Stories are the...

Take a two hour movie and divide it into equal 30-minute segments and you have four acts. Overall, you...

Why do you like watching old movies that you’ve already seen and know the plot by heart? It’s not...

Every story has two major goals. The outer goal is what’s defined in Act I and resolved in Act...

Throughout the story, the hero gradually changes. In Act I, the hero starts changing from someone trapped in a...

In Act I (the first 30 minutes), the hero is stuck in a dead end life and gains hope...

What’s exciting to watch? Two people sitting at a table doing nothing or two people sitting at a table,...

In Act I (the first 30 minutes of a two hour movie), the hero has an unresolved emotional problem:...