Story. Screenplay. Sale.
The craft of telling a story starts with structure skills.
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 the Australian Writers Guild NSW organised a night with prominent script editors, one of the questions to the panel was about the most common mistakes. From the answers I have compiled the list below, together with ten common problems from my own experience. These are not just issues with scripts of my clients, but … Read more
Writing a first draft is in essence brainstorming plot points and writing them down in a more or less chronological order. It sounds as if I am simplifying things, but once you have cracked the essence of drama, it really is that simple. To understand what follows, it is useful to read the word action … Read more