Advice

For years I gently browbeat my students. "Dig deeper," I said. "The best stories are about the human heart." I wasn't quite sure what I meant. I knew I didn't mean that old Hollywood saw -- throw in some love interest! I meant something closer to Samson Raphaelson's remark about Shakespeare in The Human Nature of Playwriting, "[He] is not a realistic writer but he is overwhelmingly real because he reports the hearts of human beings." I was teaching dramatic technique: first, playwriting in the English Department at Florida State, then screenwriting when the Film School began. I was rounding...

In Part I of this series (read Part I here), I began an examination of the true source of unity in a great story and how that unity can be achieved. I introduced you to four of the elements that can influence that unity and add significantly to the clarity, meaning and power of your work. The unifying forces we examined so far are: The Value Being Pursued, which are the cherished values like life, health, wealth and freedom that we pursue in life as goals;the Problem, which is the central event of the story; the Threat, which is the...

We all know that a story needs a sound structure. But no one reads a book or goes to a movie to enjoy a good structure. And no author writes because he or she is driven to create a great structure. Rather, audiences and authors come to opposite sides of a story because of their passions - the author driven to express his or hers, and the audience hoping to ignite its own. What draws us to a story in the first place is our attraction to the subject matter and the style. As an audience, we might be intrigued...

A Reader Asks: I have read your book REEL PEOPLE on developing psychologically sound characters. I am working on a character who has to transition from being somewhat of a racist into being a full-blown racist with murderous intentions. Can you give me any insight into what personality type would act this way and what may cause this violent outburst? Can you recommend any films that I can look at? Joshua, New York City Writer/Director/Producer Dr. Howard Gluss Responds: A film that I have seen recently that you should study that depicts bigotry and specifically Anti-Semitism in a fascinating manner...

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...