FilmmakerIQ.com

Say Goodbye to Writer’s Block: Introducing the Moral Premise

by Stan Williams, Ph.D

I hate writer’s block, and I’m sure you do, too. If you’re like most writers you have a file drawer full of stories started but never completed. The ideas were great, or so you thought. They kept you awake far into the night pecking them […]

Write What You Know

Submitted by IQ forum member 8thSamurai.
I haven’t hit many of these ‘how to’ bits since summer, being swept up in this project, work stuff, and recent tragedies, so I think it’s time.
This phrase is shot out at baby writers as often as ’show, don’t tell’; and probably receives the same […]

The Coming Age of Story

by James Bonnet
The interest in story is greater now than it has ever been, and – putting aside for a moment the movie business, television, book publishing, other major producers of story and their consumers – that interest now extends to every facet of our society.
Heavily funded, major research projects […]

7 Places to Write Your Screenplay

Suffering from writers block? Does a change of scenery help? Christopher Rice writes about the seven of the places where creativity flows in abundance.
…Stephen King suggests that you create a space for yourself somewhere in your house where you can go to do nothing but write. Whether it’s the […]

SCREENWRITING TIPS: 5 Reasons Why Not to Write What You Know

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 […]

Aristotle’s Seven Golden Rules of Storytelling

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. […]

How to write a movie

Read it aloud, make sure there’s a favorite part - and don’t fall into the ‘German funk trap’. Frank Cottrell Boyce who scripted 24 Hour Party People and A Cock and Bull Story, lays down his screenwriting golden rules
…A while back, I was on Radio 4’s Film Programme the same […]

StoryWeaving - Avoiding the Genre Trap

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 […]

What’s Wrong With The Three Act Structure

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 […]

Aristotle’s Poetics for Screenwriters

Former story analyst for Miramax Films, Michael Tierno, has built the bridge from the foundation of Aristotle’s classic Poetics to the modern cinema in Aristotle’s Poetics for Screenwriters.