William Robert Rich

William Robert Rich

William Robert Rich is the editor of ScreenplayHowTo.com (SHT) and co-author of Story Maps: The Films of Christopher Nolan. Based in Brooklyn, New York, William's unique approach to narrative analysis fuses his background as a former teacher and a software engineer. He realized that the efficient logic of code and the clear pedagogy of the classroom could be applied directly to screenwriting. This data-driven approach allows him to rigorously analyze a screenplay's logic and identify structural inconsistencies, forming the foundation of all the high-authority beat sheets and structural insights featured on SHT. He makes the engineering of a great story easy to learn.
  • Articles: 177

Llewelyn Moss in No Country for Old Men: Competence Is Not a Plan

Llewelyn Moss crouched over the open satchel of money at the desert drug-deal scene in No Country for Old Men

Llewelyn Moss is the man the audience follows, roots for, and expects to survive. He reads a landscape better than anyone in the film, finds the transponder hidden in the money, fights Anton Chigurh to a draw at Eagle Pass, and talks his way back across the border in a hospital gown. Then he dies off-screen, shot by men who have nothing to do with the killer he swore to hunt. This analysis takes his competence apart piece by piece, answers the question the screenplay never does about his age, and lands on the one deal he is offered and cannot bring himself to take.

Crimson Tide (1995): Two Right Men — Story and Character Analysis

Gene Hackman as Captain Ramsey in a red cap shouts at Denzel Washington as Lieutenant Commander Hunter in the submarine control room in Crimson Tide (1995).

Crimson Tide has no villain — it has two officers holding valid readings of the same rulebook. This analysis works from the film's dialogue as primary text: how one unreadable message builds two mutinies, why the two-man rule replays at every rank from the captain's key down to a petty officer's radio, and how the ending gets settled through two lines about horses.

Goblin’s Last Stand Analysis: How Spider-Man Refused to Become a Murderer

Cover of The Amazing Spider-Man #122 (July 1973), "The Green Goblin's Last Stand!" — the Goblin's Last Stand analysis subject — shown in three color variants, with the Green Goblin on his flyer taunting Spider-Man, who crouches over Gwen Stacy's body vowing "you murdered the only girl I'll ever love."

The Amazing Spider-Man #122 (July 1973) is the issue that delivers the Green Goblin death — and the issue where Spider-Man, one punch from murder, stops. This Goblin's Last Stand analysis maps the aftermath of The Night Gwen Stacy Died movement by movement, with a page-by-page beat sheet, the three pressures pushing Peter Parker toward the moral cliff, and an honest look at how Gerry Conway, Gil Kane, and John Romita Sr. cashed a vow of murder without letting the hero become the executioner.

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Cover of The Amazing Spider-Man #122 (July 1973), "The Green Goblin's Last Stand!" — the Goblin's Last Stand analysis subject — shown in three color variants, with the Green Goblin on his flyer taunting Spider-Man, who crouches over Gwen Stacy's body vowing "you murdered the only girl I'll ever love."
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