Advice — advice

Pilar Alessandra is the director of the Los Angeles-based writing program On The Page and a highly sought-after speaker and script consultant. She’s worked as Senior Story Analyst for DreamWorks and Radar Pictures, trained writers at ABC/Disney and MTV/Nickelodeon and presented classes at The Great American Pitchfest. Her students and clients have sold to Warner Brothers, Sony and more. She recently released her new book, The Coffee Break Screenwriter Writing Your Script Ten Minutes At A Time.Ann: In your book, The Coffee Break Screenwriter, you discuss how emotion + action tells the story, can you share your theory about story...

Most of us have read quite a few books on screenwriting, attended classes, watched videos and perhaps even had some success selling our screenplays. Somehow, the best process for structuring a screenplay or TV show remains elusive, so we continue to search for better ways to write our scripts. I have found an answer that will allow you to use what you already know, better and more efficiently.The Four Magic Questions of ScreenwritingThe Questions are a technique that when applied to dramatic structure makes the process of organizing a plot easy and fun. The Questions are like a Swiss Army...

How much thought do you think writers should invest in terms of tracking the broad strokes of the protagonist’s emotional journey when structuring the story?I think all screenwriters should know the emotional journey from beginning to end. If you have the character’s arc clearly in mind, you can then begin to build your story and character utilizing the emotional journey as one of the major leads into the physical journey. Action and character, those are the two things to follow during the unfolding of the script. Take a look at Avatar or The King’s Speech – it’s an emotional journey...

I know a lot of comedy writers.Some are funnier than others both in daily life and on the page. More often than you’d imagine, the funniest scripts are written by men and women who aren’t that much fun to be around. They can “write” funny, but not “be” very funny during normal life. Some are downright boring while others are depressed and a drag to be around. Likewise, some of the funniest writers I know are hilarious when they’re hanging out with friends or one on one, but they aren’t funny on paper. Because they were so funny, early in...

Strong story comes from so many different perspectives. There is value in every unique perspective, including your own. As storytellers, our story evolves as life moves forward. We continue to learn more about story from experiencing and interpreting our own life story and the stories of those around us. We learn new tools and techniques in how to tell story in the best way possible in order to have the optimal emotional effect on our audience. We breathe in story and breathe out the potential to emote and help others feel that their own life experience is connected to a...