Advice — advice

When I speak to screenwriters they remind me of rules I wrote in my first screenwriting book. The following rules - principles, actually - come from my 27 years chairing the graduate Screenwriting program in the film school at UCLA: 1. It's quite possible to succeed in what is in fact a thoroughly democratic enterprise; from my perch in Westwood I see it happen all the time. 2. You must be willing to give it the time. 3. When you give your script to a producer or an agent he or she is actually going to give it to a...

There is a system of thought known as the As-If Philosophy. In a nutshell, the As-If Philosophy says: We know we will die, but we act "as if" we will live forever. The ironic result is that our lives are not nearly as fulfilling as they could be. The entertainment industry is a perfect example of the As-If Philosophy. We all know it is set up so that most people will fail. But we act as if we will be part of the small percentage of people who will succeed. Why? Because we've studied the barriers and we know how...

Part Three: Hero and Villian Mix It Up We've seen how both Hero and Villain are actually composed of several different qualities. And, we've seen that for every quality the Hero possesses, the Villain has a counterpart. When these qualities are combined in this classic manner, Hero and Villain become stereotypes. When these traits are expressed to the extreme, they become melodramatic. We have also indicated that the elements of Hero and Villain might be distributed among other characters to break out of the stereotypical mold. One of the most powerful examples of this is to simply swap traits between...

Character Arc Taking the principle further yet: The finest writing not only reveals true character, but arcs or changes that inner nature, for better or worse, over the course of the telling. In The Verdict, protagonist Frank Galvin first appears as a Boston attorney, dressed in a three-piece suit and looking like Paul Newman... unfairly handsome. David Mamet's screenplay then peels back this characterization to reveal a corrupt, bankrupt, self-destructive, irretrievable drunk who hasn't won a case for years. Divorce and disgrace have broken his spirit. We see him searching obituaries for people who have died in automobile or industrial...

What is the true source of unity in a great story and how is that unity achieved? According to the dictionary, unity is the state of being one. And today it is generally agreed that a story should be about one thing - but what is that one thing? Is it the subject, the theme, the central character, the problem, the controlling idea? Or all of the above? And is there really only one source of unity or many different sources working together to create that effect? After more than 30 years of analyzing patterns in great stories, I have...