Irony & Theme I believe that most screenwriters (as well as wannabe screenwriters) are thinking about the wrong issues when writing these days. If your mind is swirling with surprising plot twists, clever story revelations, or, God forbid, what you assume the audience wants to see, then you’re thinking about the wrong things. I say …
The Rejection of Older Forms There was an art exhibit in 1999 at the Brooklyn Museum of Art entitled “Sensation.” One of the highlights was a sculpture by Damien Hirst that is actually a cow sliced vertically into twelve pieces in glass cases filled with formaldehyde. This same exhibit also has a piece by Chris …
Action Movies As I continually spout the gospel of story structure, the one argument that I keep hearing against it is: You can see the structure so obviously in the big action movies, and it’s boring. Well, as Jeremy Collier said in 1698, “The abuse of a thing is no argument against the use of …
We Are Our Own Worst Enemies I was taught in high school that there are three forms of drama: Man against man, man against nature/society, man against himself. That was back in the early 1970s before things were cleansed for PC. Now it would be (and more appropriately, too): Person against person, person against nature/society, …
There is a little coffeehouse/used-bookstore near Venice Beach where a lot of young screenwriters show up with laptop computers and work on their scripts. Several times I have seen some of these young writers actually bring a three-foot square corkboard, pushpins, and index cards with all of their scenes listed on them then play musical …