The Economics of Information The ability to use information and imagery economically and efficiently is a skill that comes with practice and revision. With careful attention, you can create a style of narrative that is effective as well as personal for you. As you hone this skill, you will create a unique way of telling … More The Economics of Information
Happy New Year! It’s a new year. Time to refocus our attention on our work and put to use the things we learned from our past endeavors. Continuing that theme, here are some things to remember when constructing the narrative for your screenplay. Stories happen in real places. Even when the worlds are fantasy, … More Screenplay Narrative: Things to Remember
The Lie that Tells the Truth Writing is more than just putting words on a page. Writing is more than constructing a story with a beginning, middle and end. Writing is absorbing and experiencing life, filtering it through your imagination and finding the truth inside an experience that allows you to communicate your ideas to … More Break Time
Characters and Locations When describing characters and locations, you don’t want the narrative to break the flow of the action. You don’t want the reader to stop and ponder your words. You want your readers to be focused on what your characters are doing in the locations in which you have placed them. Characters When … More Screenplay Narrative (Part 2)
Images and Sound More than dialogue, a movie is about images created from sound and pictures. The narrative is how a writer describes what the reader would be seeing and hearing were s/he watching the filmed movie of his or her script. Like everything else in a script, narrative needs to show the reader not … More Screenplay Narrative (Part 1)
Only tell the reader what is being seen. When describing people, places and situations never tell the reader something that can’t be seen by a person sitting in the theater watching the movie unfold. Resist the urge to explain or provide exposition. Do not give us backstory or the inner monologue of any character. Do … More On Language in Scripts – Scenes and Narrative (Part 3)
On the first page… From the very first moment, you – the writer — are responsible for what will appear in the frame of the picture of your film and in the imagination of your reader. Starting right after the words “Fade In,” you begin to create a world in which your story exists. From … More On Language in Scripts – Scenes and Narrative (Part 2)
Dialogue and description. Dialogue and description are the two functions the words in your script serve. How you choose to describe a scene and what you have your characters say are where your reader lives. They are the two elements that define the experience of your screenplay for the reader. Writing dialogue and description … More On Language in Scripts – Scenes and Narrative
What is a Story Beat? In a nutshell, a story beat — as opposed to an acting beat or a parenthetical beat used in dialogue — is a single scene. In other words, a story beat is single unit of dramatic action. The dramatic action of every scene begins with a character who has a … More Scenes and Story Beats
What makes a Scene a Scene…? In my last blog, I defined a scene as a unit of story in which a character has a clear want that s/he either does or doesn’t get because of a conflict with another character, and the result of that conflict in some way advances the plot of your … More How to Write a Scene (Part 2)
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