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The Trigger – More Than An Inciting Incident

  • James "Doc" Mason
  • .October 18, 2024
While even the non-writer will recognize that the climax is the character’s final battle, the end of the story, fewer know what to call the start of the story. Remember, there is no story without conflict. Therefore the story starts with a clear conflict. Writers will know the Inciting Incident or Inciting Event is often describ...
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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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Movies Based on Moments

  • Brock Swinson
  • .September 23, 2024
“Movies Based on Moments” Mike Mills on ‘C’mon C’mon,’ ‘Beginners,’ and ‘Thumbsucker’:“I didn’t start off thinking I was going to be a director and writing really wasn’t my thing,” said Mike Mills. “I went to Art School, got into design, and kept looking for more ways to get into the public world.”He continued, “This sounds like...
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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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How Does A Character's Stage of Life Impact Your Story?

What Stage of Life do you feel you’re currently in, and what kind of experience or situation could force you to change? You need to ask the same of your characters.I had an idea that in order to help us understand how to finish a script, discussing the basic structure and make-up of the script could be the simplest way to launch...
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How to Adapt a Script Into a Novel - Part 2

Jumping back into the two-parter about not only how to approach adapting your script into a book, but also why. What is the why? As a little recap - this industry is HARD…when you don’t have a built-in audience. A book - your own IP (intellectual property) can help you create a fan base and therefor help you get noticed.Isn’t ge...
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How to Adapt Your Script into a Novel - Part 1

As you already know, the first 14 Substacks I’ve posted dealt primarily in the breakdown of the structure of a story. I peppered in a few motivating chapters that hopefully fed your momentum as you plowed through. Now is when we get into a much more broad set of topics. This is, in the end, the crux of the screenwriting world. T...
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There’s both light and dark.. there’s a lot of dark

  • Annabel Jones
  • .August 11, 2024
'There’s both light and dark.. there’s a lot of dark!' - Black MirrorCharlie Brooker & Annabel Jones on screenwriting levers, satire, and why checking your phone is like smoking. Plus great practical advice for writers! Black Mirror. The term refers to the dark, shadowy image you see of yourself while staring at the unlit screen...
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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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Why Do Critics And Audiences Disagree So Much In Film & TV Reviews?

In recent years, it’s become increasingly apparent that the opinions of everyday audiences and established film and television critics are growing increasingly further apart. Cursory glances at review sites like Rotten Tomatoes list several films in which the audience score and the critics’ score have a gap of over 20% between t...
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When Enlightenment Hits Democracy

  • Tony McNamara
  • .June 24, 2024
“A Time When Enlightenment Hits Democracy” Tony McNamara Talks ‘The Great’:Award-winning screenwriter Tony McNamara (The Favourite, Cruella) originally told his story of Russian empress Catherine the Great through a stage play format. The play was comprised of two 45-minute parts, with the first focusing on a young Catherine and...
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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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The Power Of Westerns (Part 2)

This entry is part 2 of 2 in the series Westerns:Manifest Destiny and American ExceptionalismThe idea that Americans were destined (by God) to settle the west was in many, many early westerns considered a positive. Native Americans were demonized and the white, so-called civilized culture of the eastern states was shown to be be...
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Writing The Perfect Hallmark Holiday Romantic Comedy Movie

  • Mark Sevi
  • .April 15, 2024
Writing The Perfect Hallmark Holiday Romantic Comedy MovieHoliday films screened during major holidays are as sure as horror films screening at Halloween. Mark Sevi spoke with mega-producer Carol Baum about how screenwriters can best position themselves to sell their screenplays into this market which consistently looks for this...
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5 Techniques To Make Your Scenes Pop

What I know about scenes from years of writing and teaching scriptwriting is a lot. I’ve written hundreds of scripts, both produced and unproduced, and I’ve been teaching this stuff for 25 years and counting.But what I don’t know about scenes is at least as much as I do.Scenes are perceived to be simple in that they are there to...
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My Voice Is A Collection Of My Experiences

  • Mike Gauyo
  • .April 8, 2024
Mike Gauyo (Ginny & Georgia, Insecure) cut his teeth in television as a production assistant on reality TV which led to  paid podcast and webseries gigs, which further led to a writers’ assistant job on Claws. Through a series of recommendations, he landed a writing spot on Ginny & Georgia.Being on set provided Gauyo with valuab...
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Pixar's Rules Of Storytelling

Rule #1: You admire a character more for trying than for their successes.Rule #2: You’ve got to keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience. Not what’s fun to do as a writer. The two can be very different.Rule #3: Trying for theme is important. However you won’t see what the story is about until you’re at the end of th...

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