Story Structure

Showing 1191 - 1200 of 1516 results

Overwriting and Underwriting

October 7, 2013

Most people underwrite their stories. By that I mean that they don’t write enough. Instead of letting us know and understand different characters, all we...

Keep Your Scenes From Dragging

October 4, 2013

Watch a bad movie and your mind will start to drift away because you don’t know what’s going on or you don’t care. Either way,...

An Interesting Dilemma

October 3, 2013

Every movie starts off with a compelling dilemma, which defines the initial Big Question. In the upcoming movie “Gravity,” the dilemma is about two astronauts...

The Pacing of Older Movies

September 26, 2013

The other day I watched the second James Bond movie, “From Russia with Love.” The story isn’t bad but the pacing is much slower than...

The Lesson From “Toy Story”

September 25, 2013

I heard an interesting interview with the original writers of “Toy Story.” The writers knew at the end that they wanted Woody, the hero, to...

Anticipation and Uncertainty

September 23, 2013

How do you keep a story from slowing down and dragging? Watch a bad movie like “Grandmaster” and you’ll likely fall asleep. Watch a long...

Comparing Flawed Movies to Good Ones

September 21, 2013

When you see a good movie, it can inspire you to achieve the same goal, but it can also intimidate you as a novice screenwriter....

Books and Movies

September 20, 2013

Watch a movie based on a book and you can see the different changes the movie had to make to tell the same story as...

Conflict and Mystery

September 19, 2013

How do you grab an audience’s attention and hold it? Show them conflict and mystery. Conflict implies a battle between two people while a mystery...

Keep Raising the Stakes

September 16, 2013

What makes a movie drag is that nothing important seems to be going on, there’s no reason for anyone to do anything, and nothing seems...

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.