Story Structure

Showing 101 - 110 of 1516 results

Create Stronger Stories By Surprising the Audience

April 23, 2024

When an audience sees a movie, they want to be surprised (in a good way). That means every scene should never be exactly what it...

Foreshadowing the Ending With the Beginning

April 19, 2024

One way to outline a story is to focus on the beginning and ending scene because these two scenes represent bookends. The beginning scene foreshadows...

Write Great Scenes By Constantly Knocking Characters Off Balance

April 15, 2024

Far too many writers write boring scenes. The most common problem is they try to mimic reality, but reality is mostly boring. Nobody wants to...

Write Dialogue to Attack Other Characters

April 11, 2024

Never write realistic dialogue because realistic dialogue is boring. Just record a typical conversation and play it back. Real dialogue is boring precisely because it...

Make a Stronger Story by Setting Up Details in Early Scenes

April 7, 2024

There’s a huge difference between a great movie and a bad movie. In a bad movie (“Argylle”, “The 355”, “Madame Web”) scenes feel completely separate...

Make Every Scene Interesting By Constantly Posing Problems

April 3, 2024

Here’s one way to write a boring scene. Try to mimic real life and write a scene that duplicates real life such as trying to...

Every Story is About Resolving a Problem From the Past

March 30, 2024

It’s easy to come up with an idea for a story. However, it’s hard to turn that idea into a complete story. Most often, writers...

Make Every Goal As Difficult as Possible

March 26, 2024

If you analyze major scenes, you’ll notice they actually have pretty simple goals. In the scene below from “Back to the Future,” the goal in...

Using the Two Spines of a Story to Create a Strong Screenplay

March 22, 2024

Watch a bad movie and you’ll see scenes that seem to exist for no other reason than to show action, sex, or special effects. The...

How to Write a Boring Script

March 18, 2024

When you’re learning anything for the first time, you won’t be very good at it. In fact, you’ll probably make common mistakes that nearly all...

About Wallace Wang

First place winner in Scriptapalooza’s 2023 screenwriting competition for the supernatural horror screenplay titled “Nightmares From a Past Life”. Author of “The 15 Minute Movie Method”, “Story Starter”, and “Writing Scenes for Screenplays” in addition to over 50 computer books. Writer of “Three of a Kind”, a situation comedy produced by San Diego State University’s film class that won a student Emmy award. Designer of the board game “Orbit War”, published by Steve Jackson Games, that simulates satellite warfare in the near future.