Story. Screenplay. Sale.
When talking about story structure, many people talk about where exactly in the story the structural element needs to happen. Often this is expressed in terms of a page number, or even a percentage of the film’s total duration. I would prefer to leave such quantification aside for a moment and rather look into what … Read more
Inciting Incident, Catalyst, Call to Adventure, Disturbance. All terms referring to the first crucial moment: the point where your story kicks off. Michael Hauge closes the first of his six story stages with it, at the 10% point of the story (10mins in a 100mins movie). Paul Gulino sees it as the end of the … Read more
The first guy to write down that a story needs a beginning, middle and end, was Aristotle. About twenty-four centuries ago. But his beginning is not the same as our Act One; it is the point in this act where the story kicks off. What Aristotle was talking about, in screen story terms we call … Read more
When I asked this student which one thing she remembered above anything else, she replied: “That you can break the rules, and get away with it.” She was not my student. In itself there’s nothing wrong with trying, but it saddens me that Heath Ledger’s last Australian film, Candy, was an example of a film … Read more
This bibliography I often include in my course notes. It contains publications that I regularly consult or quote from. Aronson, Linda: Scriptwriting Updated, Allen & Unwin Field, Syd: Screenplay, Dell Publishing Gulino, Paul: Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach, Continuum Hauge, Michael: Writing Screenplays That Sell, Harper Resource Howard, David & Edward Mabley: The Tools of Screenwriting, … Read more