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So You Finished a Draft... Now What?

RewritingIt’s something we all need to deal with, and there is no getting around it. Rewriting, rewriting, rewriting. In the last post, I talked about writer’s block and, well, how and why writer’s block is pretty much a whole bunch of bullshit, and to again quote Terry Pratchett, “something invented by people in California who ...
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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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Understanding the First Half of Your 2nd Act

Understanding the First Half of Your 2nd Act with Some Help from Harry and Sally:Sequence 5: Let’s Get Into ItYou’re rumbling along on a road trip with your girlfriend, boyfriend, spouse, or partner. Let’s just set that stage for a second. You’ve been on the road for a few hours. The high and excitement of hitting the open road ...
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What's All This Talk About 'The Promise of the Premise'?

A New WorldAs I continue this series of daily newsletters, bringing us from one sequence of story structure into the next, I’m going to start this one with a little bit of a set up. It’s something rather simple, but important in that it will hopefully get your brain properly wrapped around this post’s topic – Sequence 4, and wha...
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Navigating Your Story

  • Salva Rubio
  • .September 16, 2024
Since its inception over twenty years ago, the methodology of Blake Synder’s Save the Cat has been as synonymous with storytelling as Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey and Syd Field’s Paradigm Worksheet.Many screenwriters can’t help but spot the moment when “Bad Guys Close In”, or the “Dark Night of the Soul” whenever they sit do...
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What is the Most Essential Element to Any Story?

What is the Most Essential Element to Any Story (and is Too Often Ignored by Emerging Writers)?Hint: It's Not the Main Character, nor Structure, or Even a Marketable Hook.The Secondary Character Affect and Core RelationshipWelcome back everyone! You’re reading my fourth Substack post, which leads me to believe that you might act...
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The Set-Up Event

The Difference Between a Set-Up Event and the Inciting Incident + Defining the 2nd Sequence of Your Story:The Set Up EventIf you didn’t already know, I used to have a solo podcast on the ISA website called The Craft. I also released a book on screenwriting a few years back. A lot of these newsletters are in reference to what I c...
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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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It All Comes Down To Biology

  • Pen Densham
  • .August 4, 2024
Why We Watch Movies – It All Comes Down To Biology:Joseph Campbell became the patron saint of screenwriters thanks to George Lucas famously using his theories when he created Star Wars. Campbell studied thousands of myths, parables, and legends, from all time periods, religions and cultures. In his book, The Hero With a Thousand...
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Dramatic Tension – Don’t Let Them Go (Part II)

  • Patrick O'Driscoll
  • .August 4, 2024
This entry is part 2 of 2 in the series Dramatic Tension:Keeping audiences hooked relies on meaningful dramatic questions, yet few stories generate tension on the most meaningful level.Nothing prevents an audience’s boredom like the need to know what happens at the ending. Provided the protagonist has our empathy or interest, th...
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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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How to Write Authentic LGBTQ+ Characters That Everyone Relates To

Writing for other identities and demographics can be a challenging undertaking when a writer does not belong to that identity group themselves. In the instance of writing for marginalized groups, it’s easy and valid to question if it’s ever okay to write for a character if the writer does not also identify with said group. Conve...
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Story is Story

  • Brianne Hogan
  • .July 13, 2024
Story is Story - Art Holcomb on Screenwriting:When Art Holcomb was eight years old, his maternal grandmother, a poet, gave him a blank book. It was to encourage him to write out his feelings. She also shared with him books by the greats, like Shakespeare and Cummings. By the time he watched A Midsummer Night’s Dream at ten, he w...
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Experience Emotional Authenticity

  • Christopher Riley
  • .July 7, 2024
“Experience Emotional Authenticity” Author Christopher Riley on ‘The Defining Moment’:“I think it was a desire to connect with people,” said author Christopher Riley about his fascination with filmmaking and screenwriting. “I didn’t do that very well, [but] I have this memory of writing a poem in grade school and my uncle read i...
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What An Audience Really Wants From Your Script

If you’re trying to write a successful script—-a script that gets produced and seen by a large number of viewers—-you obviously want your script to be loved by your audience. So if we want people to watch our work, we need to know why they watch stories in the first place.Why do people watch television? Why do they go to the mov...
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Revenge Movies Are A Dish Best Served Bold (Part 2)

This entry is part 2 of 2 in the series Revenge:CATHARSISThe psychological underpinnings of revenge, around for generations of storytelling, involve identification with a character’s situation (empathetic response) which then leads to catharsis. Once we bond with the main character, identify strongly with their plight, satisfyin...
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Revenge Movies Are A Dish Best Served Bold (Part 1)

This entry is part 1 of 2 in the series Revenge:Few themes are as relatable as revenge. We’ve all been wronged and considered various responses to that wrong. Not many of us use violence or extremes toward the wrongdoers, but there is a place we all go to where those remedies are at least internally considered. That’s what makes...
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Writing Appealing Character Descriptions

Character descriptions are one of the most difficult things to perfect in your screenplay. “What?,” you gasp. Descriptions are more than a name, gender, age, occupation, and what a character is wearing. Their primary purposes is to generate images in a reader’s mind with economy and precision, especially when a character is firs...
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What Make Gangster Films & TV Shows Work? (Part 1)

This entry is part 1 of 2 in the series Gangster Films:It’s hard to imagine a more enduring genre film type than the gangster movie. Of course, traditional gangster films, as with most genre films, have mutated into powerful crime TV shows like The Wire, Ray Donovan, and The Sopranos or films like Proud Mary and The Departed, bu...

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