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Goals: Driving the Narrative

  • James "Doc" Mason
  • .November 18, 2024
As with every story element described in this series, the goal relates directly back to the idea of conflict. To reiterate, in its most basic form, conflict is when someone wants something and another person doesn’t want them to have it.More specifically, narrative conflict is typically when one character proactively pursues a g...
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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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How To Write A Contained Film

Contained films are restrained stories that have traditionally been limited to the horror/ thriller genre. They are characterized by having few characters (often three to five, sometimes as few as one), no more than one or two main locations such as a haunted house, and a skeleton crew.Most importantly, they are filmed on shoest...
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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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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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Horror Screenwriting

  • Neal Marshall Stevens
  • .July 7, 2024
“Take it Back to First Principles” Neal Marshall Stevens Talks Horror Screenwriting:“I have been writing screenplays since I was 13 years old. I have been writing for a long, long time, back before there even were screenwriting books,” said Neal Marshall Stevens, who has 45 writing credits on IMDb (and many more that are unliste...
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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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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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Get To The Same Place In A Less Expectant Way

  • Joby Harold
  • .June 10, 2024
“Get to the Same Place in a Less Expectant Way” Joby Harold on ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’:“The Magnificent Seven. The Great Escape. Star Wars. Jaws. Everything that came out of that late 70s period, as a little kid in England, I loved that and started making little movies. I decided I was going to go for it,” said screenwriter Joby Harold...
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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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