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I'm going to be cruelly honest here. Your first script is going to suck on toast anyway, so just WRITE the thing, and most importantly FINISH it. I'm not being a dick. Everyone's first scripts suck. It is a law of nature. My first script was unreadable. General wisdom states that a screenwriter...

Well, you've opened a whole can of worms here (and a lot of righteous artistic indignation with it), but just to branch off of what Alcove said: Cinema is a VISUAL medium. Theater is a PERFORMANCE medium. Because theater is very limited as to what information it can give visually (because its...

Okay, this thread is confused as hell because none has bothered to define exactly what everyone is talking about. Are we talking about a. realism -- which means the degree to which a film looks, sounds, and behaves exactly as things behave in real life (which is an aesthetic quality), b...

I have tried to make a couple of short films that follow the restorative 3-act structure, but it never really seems to work. At least it never gets the same kind of positive reaction as many simpler, less traditionally narrative films. I have always said that shorts run on concept (I have even...

Think of it like a stageplay. I do not mean write it like a stageplay, because stageplays usually come off stiff or wooden when adapted too directly to film. What I mean is that virtually every stageplay produced in the last few centuries has had to tell its entire story in only a handful of (or...

"Little Red Riding Hood" was originally intended as a tale to warn children away from child molesters. Maybe you should use that as a jumping-off point.

I was thinking about something akin to "method writing" a while back, though nothing like going all bipolar and drinking yourself into oblivion. I was thinking as copying the actual methods actors use to bring genuine emotions to entirely fictional situations. I starting thinking along this...

Character arcs are relatively simple once one breaks them down. 1. The protagonist starts the story with an INTERNAL NEED (to find love or acceptance, find self-respect, open him/herself up to others, etc). The internal need is something missing from the character that keeps him/her from being...

The only thing I would think about improving is the "apathetic atheist" part. It doesn't really say much about what makes this character interesting or unique to this situation. Is the protagonist's atheism really the central quality of this character? Is it the one trait/value that influences...

You do both at the same time. Good storytelling is not about lecturing, but shepherding. It is like how a good teacher makes his or her students feel smarter, more confident, and more interesting in learning by not simply dumping answers in the student's laps, but by leading them to ask...

Although everything everyone has said is correct, I just want to comment on the shocking audacity of this guy. He is clearly not a professional and has no idea what he is talking about. This was clear even in your first paragraph. Usually when you ask for comments and all you get back is some...

Theme to a story acts like a ghost or a shadow. It's always floating around behind things, though it does not always (in some cases rarely) makes its presence known. If you're asking whether every single scene needs to have a physical element that exists to specifically express the theme, then...

Here are my rules on dialogue. Scenes need to be efficient. Useless dialogue is the styrofoam packing peanut of cinema. It's just filler that bogs things down. When characters are TALKING, that is time spent where they are not DOING, therefore the plot is not doing much development. A piece...

This post brings up a big misconception most beginners have about screenwriting. The various elements of a screenplay are not separate components like the ingredients in a salad. You can't just add more tomato, or go without the croutons. Cinematic stories are holistic, meaning everything is...

Well, yeah. It's called the storyteller/audience relationship. Storytelling is a process of constant one-way communication from storyteller to audience where the storyteller uses his/her story information and how he/she communicates it to create a desired emotional or mental experience from the...

"scribbler blog-o-zine" Over 52 original articles written for the last three and a half years, and still going strong. A serious screenwriter's blog-o-zine with in-depth instruction and provoking new ideas. www.uncelebrity.blogspot.com

How do I add a signature to the bottom of my posts? I can't find the way to do it on my user page.

Well, I didn't like American Psycho, so in my personal opinion that movie fails with its protagonist. This doesn't apply to Hannibal Lecter, because Lecter wasn't his movies' protagonist (unless you mean that Hannibal Rises movie, but I never saw that one)

The Bourne Identity and Michael Clayton by Tony Gilroy was I needed to learn how to writing kick-ass action/description. Gilroy's like a sniper with words.

(I just said something to this effect in another thread, but I will repeat it here) The idea that a protagonist has to be "liked" or "sympathetic" is a complete misconception. What is important is that the protagonist in some way BE WORTHY OF THE AUDIENCE'S RESPECT. The hero can be a jerk, or a...