When people write loglines or a “premise test,” they often write one that misses the meat of the story. Stories aren’t just about the setup of an idea, it’s about the execution of that idea. That execution occurs in the second act.
Don’t Write in Variables. Commit To Specifics.
Five Ways That Story Coaching Helps Your Screenwriting
Story coaching is the best, most efficient way to get better as a writer. It begins when a writer hires me for a specific project. They’ll tell me what they want to accomplish and what’s preventing them from executing it to their satisfaction. I’ll lay out a series of exercises and actionable steps that slice the huge project into a series of small, manageable ones. It’s an individual process, every writer is different, every writer benefits from a different approach.
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Intro to Loglines
Question: Should I write a Story Map before I begin writing a draft?
Answer: Sure, if you can. But you’re going to run into a problem. If you can’t tell your story in 75 words, you can’t tell your story.
Most beginners have trouble articulating their movie in a a few sentences. This is a learnable skill.
Breaking Down Story Maps
Story Maps are one of the greatest resources on ScreenplayHowTo. They provide a great way for a novice writer to get a handle on the many moving parts and information that’s included with a screenplay. Story Maps are wonderful tools. I strongly encourage people to spend as much time as possible making their own.
Once you get a good grasp on how Story Maps work, you’re going to want to push them beyond that, so you can better identify the part that helps you write the second act.
How To Write a Logline
Being a screenwriter isn’t just about writing a screenplay. You also need to know how to write other important stuff like treatments, synopses, one-pagers, and loglines.
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Adding Camera Direction to Your Screenplay — Yes or No?
If you’ve ever read a book on screenwriting, you’ve probably heard that adding camera movements to your script is a no-no. The reason for this is simple: novice writers overuse camera movements to the point that they distract the reader and actually impede the reader’s ability to visualize a scene. Instead of teaching writers how to use camera movements effectively in their scripts, it’s easier to just to tell them not to use them at all. But I disagree. If you want to know how to include camera shots and angles the right way, read on. [Read more…]
When to Use CUT TO: (and When Not To)
The majority of screenwriting books tell you that you should avoid using CUT TO: between scenes because it reeks of amateurish writing and quite frankly, it’s obvious that to go from one scene in a movie to the next, there will be a cut. New writers read that and typically remove every instance of CUT TO: from their scripts which can be just as bad as using it too much.
The trick is to know when to use it and when not to… [Read more…]
Every Screenwriter’s Toolbox
For every successful screenwriter, there’s a unique story of how he or she made it over the wall. Each one is different, and no one’s journey can be duplicated by anyone else. Some had parents in the industry, some got big breaks, and some went to film school, while others didn’t get any of those advantages. It’s not important. What IS important is that you, as a hopeful screenwriter, build a toolbox of essentials that will allow you to seize any and every opportunity that comes your way. [Read more…]
When Actors Ad-Lib Your Dialog
I was recently on set talking to some of the actors that had been hired to say the dialog I’d written into my screenplay. They asked me if it annoyed me when actors ad-lib and embellish the dialog I’d written. This is how I explained it to them and now I’m going to explain it to you as well:
Good dialog is concise. It’s tight. There aren’t a lot of extra words thrown in. Words are rarely repeated in a scene (I explain this in my previous post Writing Good Dialog). Rhythms differ for different characters and the word choices align with that character’s level of education and IQ. [Read more…]
