15 Cunning Red Herring Examples in TV and Film
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 …
How-To Guides
“What we can learn from…” type articles.
16 Powerful Plot Devices To Use in Your Screenplay
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 …
What Are The Must-Know Keys to Writing Great Character Descriptions?
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 …
Protagonist and Antagonist: How to Craft The PERFECT Dynamic
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 …
Writing the Perfect Controlling Idea for Film and TV: The ULTIMATE Guide
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 …
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 …
15 Crafty Exposition Examples: How to Do It Right
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 …
How to Write a Great Biopic: Pitfalls Screenwriters Should Avoid
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 …
Save the Cat! Analysis Series: MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING (2002)
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 …
Your First Draft : 9 Essential Steps to Getting it Right
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 …
201 Character Archetypes Writers MUST Have In Their Armoury
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 …
The Fourth Wall Break in Screenwriting – How to Do it & Why
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 …
World Building in Film and TV: The Essential Steps
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 …
50 Hollywood Screenwriters Reveal Their Writing Process
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 …
How to Definitively Nail Your Movie Theme – The ULTIMATE Guide
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 …
10 Fantastic Internal Conflict Examples
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 …
How to Write a Whodunnit or Detective Movie
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 …
Thriller vs Horror – Why The Subtle Differences Can Save Your Script
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, …
How to Generate Great Script Ideas – 5-Step Guide
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 …
How to Write A Coming-Of-Age Movie
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 …
Crafting Ideas for Great Movie Titles: Your 5-Step Guide
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 …
How to Write Outstanding TV & Movie Loglines: The ULTIMATE Guide
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 …
Why Screenwriters Need Pro Script Analysis Now, More Than Ever
Why Pro Film & TV Script Analysis is Critical to Writers There’s often an element of mystery or confusion surrounding script analysis services. Sitting at home, watching a bad film …
Save the Cat! Analysis Series: SUPERBAD (2007)
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 …
Save the Cat Analysis Series: GROUNDHOG DAY
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 …
Save the Cat Analysis Series: DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS
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 …
How to Write Period Drama
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 …
Reddit Screenwriting: A Comprehensive How-To Guide
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 …
15 Great Mike Judge Quotes for Writers & Filmmakers
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 …
What is “electricity”, in screenwriting terms?
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 …
What the Most Successful Sports Team Can Teach Screenwriters
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 …
GENIUS CHARACTER REVEALS: R J Macready (THE THING)
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 …
An Ultimate Guide to Screenwriting Etiquette in Film & TV
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, …
10 Screenwriting Lessons From DEAD MAN’S SHOES (2004)
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 …
31 Writing Lessons From Iconic Author Kurt Vonnegut
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 …
Which Species of Screenwriter Are You?
Screenwriter 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, …
Is the Subtle, Theme-rich Screenplay Dead?
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 …
OPINION: Screenwriters Should Consider the Cinema Experience
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 …
Should Screenwriters Write “Omnisciently”?
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 …
10 Screenwriting Lessons From ANGEL HEART (1987)
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 …
10 Thriller Screenplays You Should Read
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 …
The 10 Script Notes Smart Screenwriters Know to Ignore
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 …
10 Minor Characters Who Still Have a Great ARC
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 …
Unresolved Plot Threads: Magic or Madness?
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 …
10 Commandments of the Accountable Screenwriter (Download)
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 …
How to Write “Mythically” but Avoid Cliche – PDF Guide
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, …
10 Almost-Great Screenplays
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. …
15 Genius Inciting Incidents by Screenwriters
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 …
10 Classic Mid-Film Plot Twists by Screenwriters
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 …
10 Moments Where Problem Upon Problem Hits the Protagonist
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 …