Advice — expert series

I'm sitting here struggling with how to write a critique of this highly praised yet flawed screenplay. Besides my feeling of it not being good enough - in spite of being highly successful in Hollywood - what I really want to do right now is have a muffin, and I might as well have coffee too, although it might be better to exercise first. Kaufman - the writer not the character - has been applauded for his very post-modern technique of including his own struggle to write an adaptation of "The Orchid Thief" as part of the story. If we're...

Agents aren't really necessary as you begin your screenwriting career. Although agents are sales representatives with contacts that new screenwriters don't have, they also do many things writers can do for themselves. Agents, for instance, submit log lines -- writers can submit log lines. Agents telephone people -- writers can telephone people. Agents talk to producers -- writers can talk to the producer's assistant. Nobody in Hollywood has a secretary anymore. They are mostly called producer's assistants, and they can be your best buddy in the whole, wide, celluloid world. Make nice with the producer's assistant, and the producer's assistant...

For most people, the terms story and plot are synonymous. People read a book or go to a movie and come away saying, What a great story! But the reason the book or film is so affecting is generally because the story has a great plot. (Don't think I'm forgetting about character and its importance to a great story. I'm including it in plot as part of a well-told story.) ~~ So What Exactly Is Plot? 1. Arrangement of Events In literature or drama, plot encompasses three important factors. First, it refers to how events are arranged to achieve an...

'The moment comes when a character does or says something you hadn't thought about. At that moment he's alive and you leave it to him.' --Graham Greene Plot does not magically appear with the creation of a character; Frankenstein's monster might open his eyes, but until he gets up from the table and DOES something, there is little basis for a plot. Plot comes with your characters taking action; with their interaction with others; with their traits being applied to imagined scenarios. A few issues to consider: PERCEPTION AND REACTION Two men stand in line at a bank at 2:50PM....

In many ways, we memoirists have it made. Our plots present themselves to us wholly realized; our characters come to us fully formed. By using our own lives as subject matter, we are spared the hard work of imagination that fiction writers must bring to their craft. You might say that we're already ahead of the game going in. If you were a writer fond of using sports metaphors, that is what you might say. We memoirists are already ahead of the game going in. We're like the junior league bowling team I was on in seventh grade. Because the...