Advice — advice

If you saw the season-ending episode of Monk, do you remember the clue that helped catch the killer?Me, neither.In the recent thriller Fractured, what was the mistake Anthony Hopkins made that proved he killed his wife?You got me.My point, and I do have one, is that often writers think the most important aspect of a good mystery is the ingenuity of the crime, the unraveling of the clues. Which is why many writers are scared to death of even trying to write a mystery or thriller.Fear no more.Yes, viewers of mysteries and thrillers like tightly-plotted narratives, clever red herrings, and...

In my previous articles - The Essence of Story, Beyond Theme: Story's New Unified Field, The Metaphor Is King, and The Tragedy, Mystery, and Romance of Genre, I pointed out that all great stories have the same underlying, universal structure - namely, there is a threat, either agent or perpetrator, that creates a problem that brings about a change to a state of misfortune and is the main source of resistance that opposes the action when someone tries to solve the problem and restore a state of good fortune. In stories that end tragically it's the reverse - the story...

As a screenwriter, you may use other script consultants to critique your material, but inevitably you'll need to master the ability to analyze your own work. This can be a difficult task, somewhat akin to trying to look at your own face (without a mirror). If you are going to write at a level that sells, however, you will need to rewrite. And rewrite. And rewrite. But do not despair, you're in good company. Many screenwriters struggle over evaluating their own work. I still have bloodstains on my office walls where I pounded my head as I rewrote one script...

A story that made a big impression on me was "Little Red Riding Hood." I was ten and my mother said to me, "Who's the main character in the story?" I thought for a moment, and said, "Red Riding Hood." "How so?" "The story is called that," I said. "Little Red Riding Hood." "You think so, do you?" my mother said. "I think it's misleading. She's not in the story very much. What about the Wolf? Why don't you take a look at the story from the Wolf's point of view? Ask yourself how the Wolf feels about all this?"...

The phone rang.It was a big shot producer from a major studio. "Hey, Ken, I love what you've done! What a great idea! I'm gonna steal it from you."Was he talking about one of my scripts? No. What he was talking about was - well, read on.Let's say you've had a pitch meeting. (And I'll talk about pitching later in this article.) The producer likes what he's heard and the usual line is "Send me a one-page synopsis."So you go home, knock yourself trying to condense your 118-page screenplay into one page.And what you write sucks.It reads flat, you've left...