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Minor Characters Don’t Need Major Introductions
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Loading ...by Christina Hamlett EXT. – DUSK – CHICAGO STREET In a traveling shot, we see JOSEPH TAMBERLIN, a homeless man of 47, asleep between two garbage cans in a trash-littered and stinky alley. He has long, dirty blond hair streaked with grey and pulled back in a ponytail secured with a child’s discarded scrunchy. His eyes are [...]
Giving The Audience A Great Ride
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...How to Create Passion, Suspense, and Other Entertainment Dimensions by James Bonnet The entertainment dimensions are the pleasant sensations the audience feels when they experience your story. The most important of these feelings are those associated with the actions of the genre structures. When you isolate the plots and subplots of your story, you isolate actions that [...]
StoryWeaving - Avoiding the Genre Trap
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...by Melanie Anne Phillips A common misconception sees genre as a fixed list of dramatic requirements or a rigid structural template from which there can be no deviation. Writers laboring under these restrictions often find themselves boxed-in creatively. They become snared in the Genre Trap, cranking out stories that are indistinguishable from a whole crop of [...]
The Art of Plotting
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...by Linda Cowgill For many people plot is the same thing as structure. Both deal with designing the story, creating relationships between its elements and developing how action builds to a climax. When you structure a film story, you’re working out the plot to discover the best way of telling it. ~ The Principles of Organization – [...]
Dramatic Irony
(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5) Loading ...Dramatic irony, not much written about it, though it appears in characterizations, story structures, scene structures and even lines of dialogue. What is the elusive relationship between dramatic irony and quality? …Dramatic irony. What is it? I got no clue — says the professional screenwriter. Proving that you can’t escape it even when you don’t [...]
Breaking the Screenwriting Rules
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...by Howard Suber Everybody in Hollywood knows the top three rules of screenwriting: 1. Write what you know. 2. Films must have a happy ending. 3. Films must have three acts. But few people know what these rules all have in common: They are all wrong. Rule #1: Write What You Know There is no writer alive who has not been advised, “Write [...]
Why ‘American Beauty’ Works: Focus on the Use of Symbols
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...by David Freeman There are many ways symbols that can be used in a movie. Today I will examine one of them. Alan Ball, the screenwriter of ‘American Beauty,’ makes riveting use of the color red throughout the film. The first time we see Annette Bening, she’s cutting bright red roses. What does the color red mean in [...]
Plot Reversals Shown in Scene
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...by Martha Alderson In real life, some people skate from one success to the next. Others hit a flat-line long before they ever actually die. Unlike people, all story characters suffer both ups and downs throughout the entire story. These reversals play out in three major plot threads: Dramatic Action, Character Emotional Development, and the Thematic Significance. [...]
What’s Wrong With The Three Act Structure
(3 votes, average: 3.67 out of 5) Loading ...by James Bonnet The three act structure is not a story structure. You can’t find it in myths and legends or other great stories of the past and you can’t find it in nature. So why is it being applied to the screenplay or the story of a film? It’s a good question because it makes [...]
Cinematic Storytelling: Writing for the Unconscious
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...by Jennifer van Sijll The Case of The Sixth Sense One has to wonder what Freud would have said, seated in a modern day Cineplex while watching the final credits of M. Night Shyamalan’s extraordinary film, The Sixth Sense. It’s hard to imagine a greater homage to Freud’s concept of the unconscious than its deft exploitation in [...]
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