James Hudnall reflects on where stories came from and how they impact our culture. …At the dawn of mankind our ancient ancestors huddled around campfires and told stories to entertain each other. But the smarter ones realized there was a way to make the stories more effective for the audience. And that was the origin Read MoreRead More
Charlie Rose has put together a collection of interviews with several successful writers on a variety of topics. You can find the complete collection here. Salman Rushdie: Salman Rushdie on fantasy Salman Rushdie on magical realism Salman Rushdie on how pain affects writing Salman Rushdie on reading his reviews Complete Interview: John Grisham: John Grisham Read MoreRead More
John August offers up some tips to help you make those difficult technical descriptions easier on you and your audience. …One of the more common challenges faced by a screenwriter is how to explain a difficult concept that’s important to your plot. For instance, in Jurassic Park, we need to understand how the dinosaurs came Read MoreRead More
Alex Gollner ruminates on Gandhi and how he can apply to screenwriting. … “Become the change you want to see around you” -An aphorism I seem able to remember most days. “Seven social sins: politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, and worship without Read MoreRead More
Christopher Rice indulges us with his experiences as a professional Hollywood story analyst with first hand knowledge of what not to do. …You’ll most likely be told to write what you know from dozens of screenwriting books, screenwriting professors, seminars, fellow students, and probably even strangers while preparing to write a screenplay, but if there’s Read MoreRead More
Jan Janroy covers Aristotle’s Seven Golden Rules of Storytelling while coaching graduates for their final thesis films at Graduate Department of Film & Television: Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. …Aristotle 384-322 BCE, in his seminal treatise ‘Poetics or Poetica’ concluded there are seven golden rules of successful story telling. These rules or principles Read MoreRead More
by Guy Magar ‘Heck, we’ll just write them, and let the directors worry about visualization!’ More often than not, and consciously or not, this seems to be the mindset of most writers based on the many hundreds of screenplays that have crossed my desk at all levels of proficiency. Sorry folks, it’s called ‘motion pictures.’ Read MoreRead More
by William M. Akers I’ve been doing exactly what you do, writing, for a long, long time. I’ve taught and critiqued screenwriters for almost that long, and, lo and behold, I discovered that all beginning writers make the same mistakes. So I wrote a book, a checklist of stuff to do to your script before Read MoreRead More
The most important bit of writing advice for the beginning writer, every scene you write needs to be a situation, no exceptions. You must create interest before you can accomplish anything else, and situations create interest. The two basic ways situations emerge: circumstance and strong character need. …Talking about drama is not the same as Read MoreRead More
Formatting tricks of the trade, to manipulate the all important page count. For the obsessive-compulsive screenwriter. Or is that redundant? …Any script with a page length over 125 is suspect. Over 130, and the script is, at best, an interim draft with “Lots more work to be done.” …Any slight advantage is worth gaining. Nothing Read MoreRead More
Using Reverse Cause and Effect to Construct a Tight Script by Jeff Kitchen The work of the amateur screenwriter is often characterized by the Unnecessary. Dialogue and description are often overdone, scenes tend to be overwritten, acts are bloated, and so on. You may have entire scenes that are unnecessary, perhaps even a whole act Read MoreRead More
