Story Structure

Showing 481 - 490 of 1516 results

Why Books Don’t Always Make Good Movies

December 19, 2019

Hollywood is risk-aversive so they constantly try to turn books into movies. The logic is that if a book is popular, turning the story into...

Using Two or More Genres to Create a Story

December 16, 2019

Watch a bad movie and it typically focuses on a single genre such as a bad action movie that’s nothing but explosions and gunfire (“Terminator...

A Symbol of the Traumatic Past

December 13, 2019

Some traumatic event in the past motivated your hero and/or mentor. Now your story is all about your hero and/or mentor taking action to redeem...

The Mystery of the Haunted Past

December 10, 2019

The past needs to intrude into the present. Then part of the story is how the hero is trying to redeem him or herself from...

All Stories Are About Redemption From the Past

December 7, 2019

What makes many screenplays hard to complete is that the screenwriter runs out of ideas. One way to make sure you have enough material to...

Make Every Scene a Miniature Story

December 4, 2019

Read most novice’s screenplays and they tend to write lots of boring scenes where nothing happens. The way to avoid this problem is to identify...

Make Your Hero the Bad Guy

December 1, 2019

The quickest way to write a dull story is to make your hero always good. This creates a flat, one-dimensional character and quickly bores your...

Two Ways to End a Scene

November 28, 2019

Scenes act like building blocks that carry the audience from the beginning of your story where you pose an initial question to the end where...

Make Every Scene Unexpected

November 25, 2019

Imagine a man walking into a bank, depositing a check, and then walking out. Boring. That’s because there’s nothing exciting happening. What most novices do...

Three Story Plots

November 22, 2019

When athletes train, they off cross-train. That means they perform exercises that may not be directly related to their sport but can improve their performance...

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.