Category: Screenwriting

What are acts for, and how can you best utilize them to tell your story?

It can be argued (as many have done) that all stories have three acts: a Beginning, a Middle, and an End. Yet what does that tell you, the potential screenwriter, about the structure of storytelling… More

For beginning screenwriters, the second act can be an intimidating challenge to face
down. If the prospect of filling 60 pages with tightly paced, well-plotted action causes
you to sweat, you aren’t alone.

It’s easy enough to think of a beginning, and even to imagine an exciting climax.
But what … More

Often if you read interviews with famous actors, you will hear them talk about the extensive character biographies that they write in order to get inside of the head of the people they portray. In order to get an idea of exactly how unique your characters are, and in which … More

Part 1: The “Hero’s Journey” Never Dies

The Wachowski Brothers, Larry and Andy, screenwriter-directors of The Matrix, have taken what could have been a routine exercise in cinematic recycling and turned it into a hyperactive postmodern pastiche of every action, sci-fi, and kung fu film ever made. The result, … More

Part II: The Second Coming

So far we have seen how much of the first half of The Matrix script has layered the necessary information for us, the audience and/or script reader, to get oriented in its strange new universe. It has done this via the character of Neo–a name … More

            GRAHAM
Well, see, right now I have this
one key, and I really like that.
Everything I own is in my car.  
If I get an apartment, that's two
keys. If I get a job, maybe I 
have to open and close once in 
awhile, that's more keys. Or I

There exists no other element of a story that so embodies its reason for existence than theme. Theme is why a story, a good story, is told in the first place.

A story without theme, as evinced in so many films made these days, is not really a story at … More

Genre is a much discussed, often little understood, idea.

What genre essentially means to you, the writer, is a set of conventions and tropes that define a particular kind of story and storytelling format.

For screenwriters, genre can either be a blessing or a torturous curse. I continually advise new … More