Advice

Lynn, a Writer/Producer from Palm Springs, CA Asks: In your book REEL PEOPLE you talk a lot about characters that seem to be quite disturbed. Can the theories of personality types apply to characters that are just quirky or eccentric rather than mentally ill? And are there specific personality types that are just plain funny? Dr. Howard Gluss Responds: Yes, Lynn, it is very valuable to note that the human psyche has many facets and a writer may not always be creating psychopathological characters. Not every movie has a knife-wielding mass murderer or egomaniac tyrant. As with most things in...

Warning: If you haven't seen these movies, the following article contains spoilers which may impair your viewing pleasure. Mystic River Mystic River is a classic example of what is referred to as an "actor's movie." Big monologues, gnashing of teeth, tearing of scenery. Being an actor's movie is not necessarily a bad thing. Big stars want to be in them. And actor's movies often win Oscars in the actor-heavy Academy. But that doesn't make them great movies. Mystic River is a hybrid script, combining drama with the detective/crime forms, where the seams show. And the closer you look at the...

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...