Story Structure

Showing 581 - 590 of 1516 results

Conflict, Emotion, and Setup/Payoffs

January 20, 2019

Every scene in a screenplay must have a purpose. To make a scene interesting, it must advance the story and to do that, it must...

Internal vs. External Struggles

January 17, 2019

“Mary Poppins Returns” is nowhere near the classic that the original “Mary Poppins” was, but it strives mightily anyway. One huge difference between the two...

Life-Changing Events in Act I

January 14, 2019

In Act I, which represents the first 30 minutes of a typical 120-minute screenplay, the hero is stuck in a dead end life but extremely...

The Inner and Outer Goals

January 10, 2019

Your hero must have a goal that starts the story moving forward. As long as the hero continues pursuing this initial goal, then the story...

Make Life-Changing Events in Every Act

January 7, 2019

Look at the difference between a mediocre story and a great one. A mediocre story drags along with nothing much happening. On the other hand,...

Start with Two 60-Minute Segments

January 4, 2019

When many novices get an idea for a story, they immediately rush to write the screenplay. This inevitably winds up creating a story that runs...

Turning the Physical Story Into an Emotional Story

January 1, 2019

The biggest reason movies flop is because the screenplay focuses too much on physical action while ignoring the emotional change that makes any story worthwhile....

How to Create an Emotional Story

December 29, 2018

When most people come up with a story, they focus on the high-concept idea. In “Bumblebee,” the latest Transformers movie, that high-concept could be what...

The YA Genre

December 26, 2018

The YA (Young Adult) genre has been hot ever since the success of “The Hunger Games” and “Twilight.” However, since then, there have been many...

The Hero Must Be Proactive

December 23, 2018

The quickest way to make a boring story is to forget the number rule of storytelling: the hero must be proactive. That means whatever happens,...

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.