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Writing Morally Gray Characters, Part 2

This article is a continuation of Writing Morally Gray Characters, Part 1. Politics Is A Dirty Gray“Politics is a dirty business, but if you do not do politics, politics will be done to you.” So states novelist Will Shetterly.Many movies and TV series about politics shows the absolute compromising nature of politics. Gray charac...
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Writing Morally Gray Characters, Part 1

When you speak of gray in life, you’re normally talking about a mainly colorless tapestry. But morally gray characters, those considered not good nor bad, neither heroes not villains, are some of the more complex characters you can write. Even more interesting, is a psychological phenomenon that allows our audiences to embrace a...
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Write Worlds And Characters Actors Want To Play

  • Pen Densham
  • .August 26, 2024
I am convinced that actors with creative intelligence want to play roles that challenge, expand, and refresh their artistic instincts. They want to get involved with films that get noted for Oscar consideration. It’s the job of the screenwriter to create worlds and character roles actors want to play.When stars commit to a movie...
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Dialogue

  • Christopher McKittrick
  • .August 11, 2024
Robert McKee on Dialogue:We spoke to McKee about what made Dialogue a necessary addition to McKee’s oeuvre, what role improvisation should – and shouldn’t – play in crafting dialogue, and why there’s no such thing as writing a screenplay without form.Over the last 20 years, your book Story has been incredibly successful and infl...
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Dramatic Tension – Don’t Let Them Go (Part 1)

  • Patrick O'Driscoll
  • .July 29, 2024
This entry is part 1 of 2 in the series Dramatic Tension:Clever concepts, genre staples, and rare characters can entice audiences, but without story-long dramatic tension, your screenplay will struggle to keep them engaged.Screenwriting has one rule: thou shalt not bore thy audience. Even Neanderthal storytellers knew that borin...
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What Is a Table Read? How to Set Up a Table Read, Including Who to Invite

  • March 21, 2024
A table read is one of the most important steps in the production process for any feature film or TV series. It offers an opportunity for your cast, crew, and other members of your creative team to gather together to hear the script read aloud. Whether you’re a first-time writer or a film industry veteran, table reads can give y...
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How To Layer Your Screenplay Scenes

Scene layers is the key to really elevating the success of your scenes by making them work harder.1) Plot, Character, and ThemeThe highest form of scene incorporates the techniques already discussed and layers of the holy trinity of any story.I’m pretty sure everyone knows what plot and character is but theme always seems to be ...
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Subtext

Subtext: That Passive/Aggressive Friend You Hate, But Can't Drop:On Facebook and a myriad of other places, people put forth various requisites or must haves, do’s and do nots, they claim are needed to write, if not a great screenplay, at least a perfectly serviceable one. One of the most popular ones is subtext. Now, I prefer wr...
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Turbo Charge Your Dialogue

  • J.D Smith
  • .October 24, 2023
Screenwriters are often told that actions speak louder than words, or the time-honored adage, “show us, don’t tell us.” But carefully constructed dialogue is vital to make your screenplay pop. Dialogue expresses the thoughts of your characters when actions can’t fully do so. Dialogue reinforces or contradicts actions. Alternativ...
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Don’t Ruin a Good Read!

Don’t Ruin a Good Read! Screenwriting Mistakes to Avoid:While I don’t fashion myself a script or story consultant (because, let’s face it, there are already enough of those – including a few really great ones – out there), the simple reality is that at this point in my career, I am reading at least one script, first page to last...
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Children Don’t Think Like Little Adults

  • Michael Welles Schock
  • .August 28, 2023
On Writing Child Characters: “Children Don’t Think Like Little Adults”:One of the challenges of writing great characters is getting inside the heads of persons of much different background than yourself. It takes great effort and empathy to understand those of differing gender, age, ethnicity, or orientation in order to portray ...
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The Reflection Character

  • Michael Hauge
  • .August 14, 2023
Stories are built on a foundation of desire and conflict. To create an emotionally-involving and commercially-successful screenplay, you must give your hero some compelling desire he or she is desperate to achieve. Then you must make that goal seem impossible. And if you want to take your character through an arc – to show some ...
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Creating a Proactive Protagonist

I sometimes joke that if someone were sitting next to me regularly during my client meetings at the Akasha Cafe in Culver City, they’d think I have one note in particular that I REALLY like to give. And that note, said in many different ways, illustrated with many different examples, boils down to this: The script lacks a proact...
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Externalizing Internal Conflict

  • Jessica Hinds
  • .May 15, 2023
When I was a kid I thought I had Dissociative Personality Disorder. I always felt like there were three of me; The Innocent Child, The Business Mogul, and the Artistic Genius. I could feel when one of these personalities inside me took over but I didn’t seem to have control over it. I was a weird kid. Still am.I later realized n...
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How to write Action Description

  • Alex Southey
  • .April 10, 2023
(REPOST) Many people tend to assume that because it doesn’t affect the final film, action description doesn’t matter very much. But this couldn’t be farther from the truth. A script’s first audience is not the same as a final movie audience, it’s a team of readers, producers, directors, and so forth. And they don’t have visuals....
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Understanding the Romantic Subplot

  • Michael Welles Schock
  • .March 13, 2023
It is a common narrative archetype found in all forms of story, from ancient to modern: a hero journeys to a foreign land, wins the love of a princess by performing certain deeds, and through this romantic union becomes the land’s future king.Contemporary versions of this archetype abound in modern storytelling. Time and again w...
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Subtext In Screenwriting

Subtext – n. The underlying personality of a dramatic character as implied or indicated by a script or text. An inner world. A place glimpsed peripherally. Overtones.In screenwriting, subtext is implicit (intimated) versus explicit (stated) – a different layer of intention and depth. Using it expands your toolbox allowing you to...
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From the Over Describer to the Compulsive Recapper

  • James Napoli
  • .December 27, 2022
From the Over Describer to the Compulsive Recapper: Eight Screenwriting Screw-ups to Avoid:Many of the most common mistakes found in screenplays are also easy to rectify. So if you are working on a screenplay of your own, make sure that you do not fall into one of these types.1. The Compulsive “We See-er”We see an eyeball starin...
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The Beauty Of What’s Left Unsaid

Subtext – The Beauty Of What’s Left Unsaid (Or Unwritten) In Your Screenplay:A problem I frequently come across as a screenwriting consultant and instructor is the tendency of writers to overwrite and to include too much on-the-nose exposition. This can quickly mark as a screenplay as amateurish, whereas its opposite—effective u...
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Revealing Your Hero’s Wound

  • Michael Hauge
  • .August 15, 2022
At the beginning of your screenplay, your hero should be in a state of inertia — settling for a life that may be emotionally safe and tolerable, but that lacks passion, risk and fulfilment. Their life might be filled with activity and even give the illusion that they are striving for something, but all this effort is ultimately ...

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