Story. Screenplay. Sale.
The craft of telling a story starts with structure skills.
This post is about fantastic story ideas, not just any story idea. It is about finding the gems, and not settling for the duds. Tomorrow I will help you assess those ideas. Today we will talk about how and where to find them. I have worked in the creative industries for over 30 years now, and I can tell … Read more
When HBO launched the eponymous TV show, I took the opportunity to discover Westworld, the movie. The directorial debut of writer-director Michael Crichton has always been a part of pop culture, yet despite being a fan of Jurassic Park and reading a few Crichton novels, I never knew about Westworld. So I didn’t get the Simpson’s scene where Principal … Read more
In the early days of cinema, the feature presentation contained two parts, with an intermission halfway, at the mid point. The audience would stretch their legs, visit the bathroom and buy more popcorn. In fact, we didn’t buy popcorn back then. An ice cream vendor walked the aisles, and sold what I remember to be the best ice cream I … Read more
In an earlier post I warned you about the 2-Act Structure. If none of the structural paradigms offered by the gurus work for you, why don’t you create your own? Here is mine. Every structure model is academic. There really are no rules. Instead, these systems are merely tools to allow us to communicate about … Read more
When How To Train Your Dragon was released, some people learned to their horror that the film was written following Blake Snyder’s beat sheet. How could such a successful – and critically acclaimed – film be written by the numbers?? Creatives hate screenwriting ‘rules’. So they should. But it is also helpful to understand what rules … Read more