Story Structure

Showing 871 - 880 of 1516 results

Too Many Characters

June 8, 2016

The fastest way to sink any movie is to focus on more than one character. “Captain America: Civil War” barely works because we’re already familiar...

Saving the World

June 5, 2016

The end of every story must show the hero saving the world. In pure action thrillers, the hero literally saves the world such as in James...

Have a Clear Goal

June 2, 2016

In your story, either your villain or your hero must have a clear goal to pursue. Sometimes only the villain has a clear goal such...

The Key to Horror – Isolation

May 30, 2016

If you like horror, then write horror screenplays. The main and most crucial element of horror is isolation. From a story telling standpoint, isolation forces...

The End Answers the Beginning

May 27, 2016

Once you have a good idea for a story, you have to give it a structure. The simplest structure is to define the beginning and...

The False Victory at the Midpoint

May 24, 2016

Pause any good movie near the middle of its running time and that’s where you can find the False Victory. This is the point where...

Every Seven and a Half Minutes

May 21, 2016

Screenwriters typically break a screenplay into three Acts, but it’s actually more accurate to divide a movie into four Acts as follows: Act I —...

Conflict Must be Inevitable

May 18, 2016

The main reason the final Act of every screenplay must be the most exciting part of the entire story is because this is where we...

All Stories Are About Emotional Change

May 15, 2016

Watch a bad movie and one glaring problem is that most of the main characters don’t change emotionally. They often don’t have an emotional goal...

Studying Genres

May 12, 2016

There’s a reason why most stories fall into specific types of genres. That’s because they emphasize a certain emotion that people want to experience such...

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.