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What is a Visual Metaphor? And How to Use One in Your Screenplay… You want a screenplay to be entertaining but reflective and unique but relatable. You want the audience to connect. Using visual metaphors can be the key to unlocking this. When used intentionally, visual metaphors can transform your
How to Write a Compelling Science Fiction Movie While science fiction movies can be exhilarating to watch, they can be just as daunting to write. How do you create a captivating and believable story world? What amount of exposition is necessary for introducing sci-fi elements? How do writers not
49 Fixable Reasons A Screenplay Reader Passed On Your Project Every writer has experienced that moment of wanting to throw the towel in after getting rejected. However, it’s important not to be defeated by the thoughts of the person typically on the other end of your screenplay: The Screenplay
‘Show Don’t Tell’ – How to Best Follow the Principle It’s a term you hear frequently when it comes to storytelling – ‘Show Don’t Tell’. But what does it mean exactly? And how you can you take that principle and use it in your screenwriting? Let’s take a look…
A Character’s Fatal Flaw – What Does it Mean? In good stories, as in life, one of the most important aspects is the search for growth and the striving for change. Sometimes, the best screenplays knowingly complicate this journey by introducing a character with a major fatal flaw. A
How to Nail Your Character Arc: The Ultimate Guide A crucial part of any screenplay is the main character’s growth and evolution from beginning to end. This is their character arc. How do they grow? How do they change? What journey do they go on? Their character arc should
Why a Beat Sheet is Important to Your Screenplay Whilst inspiration can strike at any minute and writing can be incredibly spontaneous business, screenwriting is usually smoothest when you’ve got a solid plan. Organization and outlining are crucial to the process. The best outlining technique to use, is The Beat
35 Movie Tropes and How to Avoid Them in Screenwriting Most audiences can agree that movies often lose their impact when writers cut corners and rely on cliches and overused movie tropes. But what exactly is a movie trope? A movie trope is a commonly used device or motif
Film Treatments: The ULTIMATE Guide So you’ve managed to come up with a brilliant idea for a film. You’ve developed the idea into a logline and thought through a synopsis that seems to work. Time to just muck in and write the thing right? Wait a second – a
15 Cunning Red Herring Examples in TV and Film Surprise is one of the most important elements in movies and tv. Knowing how to write a killer plot twist is an important skill in your writer’s tool box. And in screenwriting, a red herring can serve as a great
16 Powerful Plot Devices To Use in Your Screenplay It’s a term that gets thrown around a lot but what exactly is a plot device? A plot device is any technique in a narrative used to move the plot forward. Plot devices are basically the methods you use throughout
The Must-Know Keys to Writing Great Character Descriptions Great character descriptions are what help ease the reader into your great characterization. They’re the entrée, if you will, to the main event. If you’re a screenwriter, you know a huge amount goes into the making of a fantastic screenplay. It’s
How Do You Craft the PERFECT Dynamic Between Protagonist and Antagonist? The conflict between the protagonist and antagonist is an essential part of screenwriting. However, this crucial conflict can often be a conflict between three characters rather than just two. We’re going to take a look at what defines
Writing the Perfect Controlling Idea for Film and TV: The Ultimate Guide A controlling idea is a foundation. Writing a screenplay is a lot like building a house. It is done piece by piece, each step builds upon another, and the final project must be structurally sound to last.
15 Examples of Bad Writing in Really GOOD Movies and Shows If you pay even a sliver of attention to people’s critiques of TV and film, then you understand that great screenwriting isn’t necessarily a given, even for shows and movies that have made it all the way to
15 Crafty Exposition Examples: How to Get Exposition Right Exposition is an essential part of any screenplay. However, there is a fine line between pulling it off smoothly and making it feel too obvious to audiences. Learning how to write good exposition is a key step in learning how
How to Write a Biopic: Pitfalls Screenwriters Should Avoid From BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY to JUDY, the biopic is a seriously popular modern movie genre. But having such a concrete story to work from in the telling of someone’s life isn’t always as carefree as it seems. With the number of
One of the world’s most popular screenwriting books, Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat has brought clarity and a sense of direction to thousands of screenwriters, many of whom were looking for the logical extension of Syd Field’s work. If you’re not familiar with it, the book delivered a structural screenwriting roadmap: not quite a full-blown
Your First Draft : 9 Essential Steps to Getting it Right It might not be what you want to hear after months, maybe years, of painstaking screenwriting work. But your first draft is almost certainly only the first stage in the evolution of your screenplay. Your screenplay’s first draft
201 Character Archetypes Writers MUST Have in Their Armoury Every screenwriter knows that writing a great screenplay takes more than just a good plot or good world building. It relies heavily on constructing memorable characters. Understanding character archetypes are an important step in this endeavor. Character archetypes are broad
The Fourth Wall Break – How to Do it and Why An increasingly common device used in modern Film and Television, the fourth wall break can serve as a dynamic way of breaking down the barrier between an audience and a protagonist. However, when deployed inappropriately it can also
World Building in Film & TV: The Essential Steps If you’ve ever enjoyed losing yourself in the world of Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, you know how important world building is. After all, world building is what makes us suspend our disbelief and fully sink into a
What’s Your Personal Writing Process? In screenwriting, sometimes the biggest challenge is discovering the most effective writing process That Works For You. For example, each and every writer has a different approach to how they: summon key plot points establish characters use subtext utilize themes generate dialogue control pacing optimize
How to Nail Your Movie Theme: What is Your Screenplay Actually About? What is your screenplay about? What is your movie’s theme? These may seem like obvious questions. But many experienced script consultants will tell you that a common frustration in reading hundreds of screenplays professionally is that often
10 Fantastic Internal Conflict Examples Internal conflict is a powerful and absolutely essential tool used by writers and filmmakers in drama. These ten examples, as well as the internal conflict definition below, definitively prove it. Most, if not all, of the great TV shows and films are rife with
How to Write a Whodunnit A whodunnit is more a narrative structure, than a genre (although one could easily argue it’s a sub-genre). That’s why it can be presented in the form of a thriller, a horror, a mockumentary and even a comedy. The structure encompasses everything from the
Thriller vs Horror – What Are the Critical Differences? In terms of movie genres, Thriller and Horror are often mistakenly confused, or even lumped in together. The truth is, both genres have critical macro and micro differences. But as they share some structure and themes, it’s easy to lose
Generating Script Ideas – 5 Top Tips Whether you’re sitting down to write your first script or are an experienced writer writing your tenth screenplay – where you get your script ideas from can be tricky. There are a number of easy ways to help get your creative juices flowing
How to Write a Coming-Of-Age Movie As its name implies, a Coming-Of-Age movie focuses on the growth of the main character from youth to adulthood. In this context, it’s quite common and logical that most of these stories revolve around the high school years, especially 12th-grade senior year. Leaving
Crafting Ideas for Great Movie Titles: Your 5-Step Guide It is often argued that the first 5 pages of your script will make or break your chances in screenwriting ,at least in terms of making that initial first impression on busy script readers, development executives and producers. First impressions
How to Write Outstanding TV & Movie Loglines: The ULTIMATE Guide There’s no doubt about it: A fundamental step in the initial stages of writing a screenplay is devising the perfect Logline. Having the ability to create a concise and effective summary of your story is a big step
There’s often an element of mystery or confusion surrounding script analysis services. Sitting at home, watching a bad film or TV show, it’s the easiest thing in the world to play “backseat writer.” The thinking goes: “I could write better than that. All I have to do is write something
One of the world’s most popular screenwriting books, Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat has brought clarity and a sense of direction to thousands of screenwriters, many of whom were looking for the logical extension of Syd Field’s work. If you’re not familiar with it, the book delivered a structural screenwriting roadmap: not quite
One of the world’s most popular screenwriting books , Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat has brought clarity and a sense of direction to thousands of screenwriters, who were looking for the logical extension of Syd Field’s work. If you’re not familiar with it the book delivered a structural roadmap to writers: not quite join-the-dots,
One of the world’s most popular screenwriting books , Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat has brought clarity and a sense of direction to thousands of screenwriters, who were looking for the logical extension of Syd Field’s work. If you’re not familiar with it the book delivered a structural roadmap to writers: not quite join-the-dots,
Period drama “Period drama” is a slippery term. Typically, it means a project set in a time period that’s older than recent memory. (While STRANGER THINGS is set in the period of the 1980s, it’s unlikely anyone would refer to it as a “period piece”.) But where to begin when facing
Reddit Screenwriting: A How-To… Reddit is an online community made up of smaller, individually themed communities, whether they’re centred around sharing simple images or jokes, posting personal anecdotes and requests for advice, or hosting Q&As with celebrities. Then, of course, there’s the Reddit screenwriting community, pictured below.
15 Great Mike Judge Quotes After gaining a Physics degree from the University of California, Mike Judge put his science career on hold. The Ecuadorean-born American would go on to create some of the most influential American animated comedies of the 90s, including BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD and KING OF THE
On the Special Edition DVD/Blu-Ray for THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, Jodie Foster is interviewed as part of a retrospective. In the interview, Foster explains that a structurally insignificant scene (the one where “Multiple” Miggs can’t contain his excitement, after Clarice’s first meeting with Hannibal Lecter) is in fact very
Learning From the New Zealand All Blacks In the history of organised sports – globally – one team stands alone. The New Zealand All Blacks are the most successful sports team in history, with an astonishing 90% win rate. We’ll say that again so it sinks in properly – they
In our Genius Character Reveals series we examine scenes and moments where a film or TV show reveals a tremendous amount of character information in a compressed amount of screen time. This instalment focuses on R J Macready (Kurt Russell) the helicopter pilot besieged by a shape-shifting alien in John Carpenter‘s
Why Screenwriting Etiquette is so important… As a new screenwriter, how does one conduct oneself in one of the most competitive industries in the world? It’s an important question, and one that so many new screenwriters only find the answer to through costly mistakes. Screenwriting etiquette is more important
DEAD MAN’S SHOES (2004) DEAD MAN’S SHOES follows Richard (Paddy Considine), a soldier who returns to his home town to get revenge on the men who abused his mentally-challenged brother Anthony (Toby Kebbell). The script was written by director Shane Meadows and Considine, with additional material by Paul Fraser. After
31 Writing Lessons From Iconic Author Kurt Vonnegut With his deceptively simple prose style, novelist, playwright and essayist Kurt Vonnegut, jr. (1922 – 2007) bridged sci-fi and literary fiction. Novels like Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat’s Cradle and Breakfast of Champions didn’t exactly open readers to new worlds as new ways of thinking. Perhaps this is why
The ‘building-block’ nature of screenwriting is such that any screenwriter needs a selection box of varying skills. As you’d expect then, different screenwriters tend to find themselves drawn to, and more skilled at, certain aspects of the process. Whether it’s creative story ideas, unique characters, or a structure so tight,
Is the Subtle, Theme-rich Screenplay Dead? Theme-rich Screenplay Treated Unfairly? The plot-light, theme-rich screenplay is often – at the script development stage at least – unfairly maligned with the phrase ‘nothing happens’. But there are many that more than make up for that ‘nothing’ with atmosphere, character and theme, from
It’s a cliché, but the entertainment industry is an industry. Show business is a business. It behoves screenwriters to remember this and to consider why write films in the first place. What makes the cinema experience worthwhile? When deciding whether an idea is worth developing and writing, it’s worth asking first: Is this
To write omnisciently as a screenwriter often entails, for better or worse, including elements that may never show up onscreen: jokes in descriptions or insights into characters’ thoughts and histories that only a reader will ever truly experience and appreciate. This statement is unlikely to surprise anyone sentient, but film
ANGEL HEART Alan Parker’s ANGEL HEART is an odd blend of genres, taking noir, psychological thriller and horror to a three-way shotgun wedding. The screenwriting lessons it can teach us are similarly diverse. The basic plot is this: a private detective named Harry Angel is hired by the mysterious Louis
Thriller Screenplay Power As a genre, ‘thriller’ tends to gently caress several others, namely horror, sci-fi, and drama. As such, thriller screenplays provide a goldmine of various narrative and structural techniques. These may well be films you’ve seen; it’s just that some of them might not have left you desperate
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