Advice — expert series

The Case of The Sixth SenseOne has to wonder what Freud would have said, seated in a modern day Cineplex while watching the final credits of M. Night Shyamalan's extraordinary film, The Sixth Sense. It's hard to imagine a greater homage to Freud's concept of the unconscious than its deft exploitation in one of the 20th century's greatest suspense films.Shyamalan's script is a masterful dance between Freud's concepts of the conscious, that information the audience is aware of knowing; and the unconscious, that information it is unaware it knows.It is Shyamalan's use of the unconsciousness, specifically that part that Freud...

There is a myth that the ability to write great dialogue is a gift that can't be learned and can't be taught. You're born with it or you'll never have it.One version of the myth goes something like this: you have to have an ear for dialogue in order to be able to reproduce realistic, believable, crisp, dialogue on the page.Great dialogue does not come from having a good ear for dialogue. It does not come from having some innate gift or talent for writing dialogue. It comes from this: knowing your characters so well that you know what they...

Acts or Reels? If you're like me, from your genesis as a screenwriter, from the very first screenwriting book you read, you were exposed to three-act structure - or from your first playwriting book, if you come from the theater. And if you're even more like me, you felt even then that something was lacking. And if you are me, you've always had a nagging feeling there must be a better approach to story out there. Three acts? The first thirty or so pages in length, what your screenwriting book called Act One, is a long way to go without...

ANOTHER YEAR, ANOTHER AGENT? It's a New Year - an auspicious time, a time to recommit to personal and professional goals, a time for change. In the last days before the ball drops most of us reflect on the waning year and arrive at a plan for the new. If you're like the majority of New Year resolution-ers, the plan begs for immediate results. You're determined to lose weight and quit smoking, so you resolve to plunk down eight hundred dollars to join the gym and make that appointment with the two hundred dollar-an-hour hypnotist. Likewise, you vow to sell...

Telling a great story has always been the key to writing a saleable screenplay or a play that everyone wants to produce--and it's always been the hardest thing to get right. No matter how many car chases or dramatic screaming matches your script may have, if the story stalls, you're going to lose your audience. Want to know the single biggest story staller there is? It's exposition. What is exposition? It's information. Who are these characters? What do they want? Where and when is the story taking place? What's going on in the world you've created? Obviously, these are all...