Story. Screenplay. Sale.
The craft of telling a story starts with structure skills.
Brimming with brawn, you’ve just bought the rights to a novel. John Doe’s fabulous, but little known title, Lawrence of Monrovia. Panic. “What was I thinking? How the devil am I going to adapt this? Can I convert a 1,400-page novel to a 110p. script?” The answer to the problem of novel adaptations is: “The same way you transport six … Read more
You’ve probably seen the memo to the writing staff of the now defunct show, The Unit, by David Mamet. I’ve had a closer look at the memo and broken it down into seven main statements. Mamet’s take on drama in a nuthell or… Aristotle for TV. 1. INFORMATION IS NOT DRAMA TO THE WRITERS OF THE … Read more
Joe Forrest looks at an important difference between characters. On the one hand there are those who change over the course of a story and then those who don’t change, but instead discover or reveal hidden traits deep within their personality. CHARACTERS WHO CHANGE Some films have characters who fundamentally change. They were bad, and the … Read more
Apart from the odd tweet, I have been relatively quiet lately. Quietly brooding, listening and watching. But that little odd tweet now strikes back, in a 1,000 word blog post. And a call to writers to wake up and denounce the TV preachers. I know, I should be solving the technical issues that have been … Read more
I play games like I once used to read novels. There exists a pile and as I finish each game (taking a number of weeks and occasionally months each) I move immediately onto the next, working my way through the continually replenishing stack. FINISH? It seems significant that I would use the word ‘Finish’ in … Read more