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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
Whilst advocating the deflection of script notes may be a strange thing for a dedicated script consultancy to do, the truth is that there is a great deal of bad advice handed out by script consultants at the murkier end of the industry (read also: “11 Reasons for the High
One facet of screenwriting which causes writers enormous headaches is conveying a lot with a little. Studying great minor characters is one way of learning this kind of efficiency. Minor Characters To Finer Characters The best minor characters can be just as rich as main characters. Ideally they should feel like they
Endings are crucial. The feeling an ending gives an audience is the feeling they leave the cinema with. It’s the feeling that will colour their perception of their whole experience and the whole film. How do unresolved plot threads make an audience feel? Often, creating a satisfying ending means tying
There are two kinds of rugby player”, the legendary Scottish coach Jim Telfer told his players, “there are the honest ones, and there’s the rest. The honest player gets up in the morning and looks himself in the mirror and sets his standard, sets his stall out, and says: “I’m going
Writing mythically with cliché is relatively easy: watch a couple of films, read a couple of books then regurgitate the obvious stuff: quasi-religious story world, the quest, the mentor, initiation, testing, the final battle, rebirth etc. Writing mythically without cliché, by contrast, is not easy at all… In the 3rd
An almost-great screenplay can be more frustrating than a really bad one. The potential is strong and the execution is almost there, but something went wrong at the final hurdle. Of course, it’s easy to pick out flaws in retrospect or to credit (or blame) the writer for something that
15 Genius Inciting Incidents by Screenwriters You’ve created a fully developed character or series of characters and are now pondering their motivation through the narrative you’ve started to develop. Inciting incidents come in all shapes and sizes, so you should try to think of something clever, inspirational or at least interesting
10 Great Mid-Film Plot Twists by Screenwriters Too often when watching a film, especially for those of us who have seen many of them, you can read where the story is going and predict what is going to happen onscreen prematurely. However, those screenwriters in pursuit of something that will
Conflict is essential in every great story. The amount and complexity of the situation can obviously vary greatly depending on the scope, settings and characters involved. In some cases, loading problem upon problem on your character(s) is important in that it shows what they are made of or it shows
Writing Science Fiction Screenplays Sci-Fi is one of those odd genres – like the Western – that among script theorists often stimulates more argument about ‘defining your terms’ than it does about structure, plot or theme. It is helpful first to qualify the term ‘genre’, as film theorists and script
Writing Horror Screenplays: How to Write Teen Horror From 1974’s BLACK CHRISTMAS – rightly credited with being the god-monster of the modern mainstream genre – through to every postmodern twist on the ‘final girl’ archetype, Teen Horror is now a mainstay of popular cinema. It was a cornerstone of the
Writing Horror Screenplays: How to Write Occult Horror Occult literally means ‘hidden’ so all Horror could be described as occult in the sense that all Horror deals with things that are suppressed, repressed, traditionally denied or habitually ignored. The Occult Horror sub-genre, however, specifically deals with the esoteric and magickal (as
Writing Horror Screenplays: How to Write Supernatural Horror Supernatural Horror is perhaps the most writer-friendly of all Horror sub-genres because its effectiveness really does live on the page, rather than being hostage to practical or CGI effects (even though we should love those too!). Unlike other Horror sub-genres (Slasher, Urbanoia, Body Horror, Cannibal) Supernatural Horror
In a giant sea of screenwriting tips and advice, where does one begin? It’s almost as bad as dieting these days. Cranberries are bad for you. No, scrap that, we’ve now decided they’re good for you. Your protagonist should dominate most scenes. It’s fine for your protagonist to drift in
You’ve rewritten, redrafted, typed ‘Fade Out’ more times than you can count. You’re finally satisfied that your script, the one you’ve poured months maybe even years into writing, is finished. Now what? For most writers, the endgame is seeing their script up on the big screen or on television, and
What hasn’t been written about Hitchcock already? From Francois Truffaut and Raymond Durgnat, to every casual message board user on IMDb, great swathes of humankind have discussed at length the directorial techniques of The Master of Suspense; the long take, use of POV, montage with a focus on hands, off-screen
Way back when… For much of the 80’s and into the 90’s, “Schwarzenegger” was a byword for a movie with a high body count. The box office was peppered with movies such as COMMANDO, TOTAL RECALL and TRUE LIES, which would draw as much attention for the dozens of onscreen
You’re no stranger to getting advice if you’re a writer. Thousands of books, hundreds of films, and even entire college majors have been dedicated to the art of honing the English language. As a result, there are bound to be some bits of writing advice that come into debate. While
Let’s be blunt about it: the financial outlook isn’t great for Film Producers at the moment. A Film Producer Salary is firmly not what it once was… I remember the days as a Producer in the Noughties, where out of every budget (development and production) the producer received 10% as
The Berlin International Film Festival was distinctly different this year. Sure, there was the typical melee of execs taking pictures around remnants of the Berlin Wall. And yes, as per usual, the films ranged from disappointing to exhilarating. Yet there was something that I can only describe as a digital
Welcome and hello to the thousands of you who visit the IS website every week. By way of an introduction, I’m Miranda Fleming, and I’m thrilled to be starting this new monthly column. I’ve worked extensively in development (Channel Four Films aka Film4) and I’ve Produced, Exec Produced and supported
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