Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
INTRODUCTION
ACT I: STORYTELLING
Introduction
IDEA
You have not written something you care about!
Your story is only interesting to you!
Your story is about miserable people who are miserable
the whole time and end miserably! Or worse!!
You haven’t spent enough time thinking up a fantastic
title!
You picked the wrong genre!
CHARACTER
You haven’t constructed your main character correctly!
You are not specific about EVERYTHING when you
create a character!
You haven’t made “place” a character in your story!
We have no rooting interest in your hero!
Your opponent is not a human being!
Your Bad Guy isn’t great!
The opponent is not the hero’s agent of change!
The Bad Guy doesn’t feel he’s the hero of his own movie!
You don’t give your bad guy a Bad Guy Speech!
Your characters do stupid things to move the story
forward, a.k.a., they do stuff because you make them!
Your minor characters don’t have character!
STRUCTURE
You worried about structure when you came up with your
story!
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CLOSING REMARKS
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ACT I:
STORYTELLING
THIS IS WHERE YOU EARN THE MONEY.
THE REST IS MECHANICS.
“If a person can tell me the idea [of a film] in twenty-five words
or less, it’s going to make a pretty good movie. I like ideas, espe-
cially movie ideas, that you can hold in your hand.”
Steven Spielberg
“I have always found it difficult to start [writing] with a definite
idea about a character, or even a definite emotion. ... But if I
start with a pond that is being drained because of a diesel fuel
leak, and a cow named Hortense, and some blackbirds flying
over, and a woman in the distance waving, then I might get
somewhere.”
Bobbie Ann Mason
“A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is
for other people.”
Thomas Mann
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the
oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”
H.P. Lovecraft
“You have to sit there churning out draft after draft of crap, wait-
ing like a neglected baby for just one drop of mother’s milk.”
Phillip Roth
“People may or may not say what they mean... but they always
say something designed to get what they want.”
David Mamet
“In science-fiction films the monster should always be bigger
than the leading lady.”
Roger Corman
“The work never gets easier. It gets harder and more provocative.
And as it gets harder you are continually reminded there is more
to accomplish. It’s like digging for gold. And when you find the
vein, you know there’s a lot more where that came from.”
Sam Shepard
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“The task of the writer is to make you hear, to make you feel – it
is, before all, to make you see. That — and no more, and it is
everything.”
Joseph Conrad
“Write about what you’re afraid of.”
Donald Barthelme
“When you go to a cinema, you should come out like having a
rocket up your ass.”
Gary Oldman
“He’s not just a dentist. He’s writing a screenplay!”
Susan Sarandon in Anywhere But Here.
FADE IN:
“All serious daring starts within.”
Eudora Welty
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ACT I: STORYTELLING
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ACT I: STORYTELLING
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“Write a screenplay that will change your life. If you don’t sell
it, at least you will have changed your life.”
John Truby
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ACT I: STORYTELLING
wrong reasons and the reader will smell it like gangrene. You
can write the goofiest movie in the world — and if there is
something in there that’s got its hooks in your guts — you’ve
got a chance at writing something wonderful.
Consider Wedding Crashers. At first blush, it seems pretty silly.
Two guys sneak into weddings to get laid. Wish I’d thought
that up when I was single. Really wish I’d thought of it last
time I sat down to brainstorm a screenplay! But, when you
look at the story, it’s really about something. Something pro-
found: the relationship between two friends. It’s a love story
between two guys, like Tombstone or Superbad. And, at its
core, Wedding Crashers is real and touching. It’s not a stupid
comedy. It’s a lovely, heartwarming story.
“No matter what they say, that ain’t what they want.”
Barefield’s Law
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ACT I: STORYTELLING
the more they go astray. Look at Die Hard. You worry about
McClane and his wife and the cop outside and even the
kid in the limo in the garage. If we don’t care about your
people, you’re toast. If we connect with the characters, you’re
home free.
When asked how you know if your idea is a good one, docu-
mentary filmmaker Ric Burns said...
“If the pilot light goes on in the engine house, that’s how you
know. You are the first audience member for your film, and the
question is: are you interested in it? You have to tell us what is
interesting to you, and what the specific reason is that you’re
drawn to it. How is it emotional? How do you articulate that
emotion, and what are the details? You need to know things like
in the Civil War, when you got hit by a mini-ball, it didn’t make
a neat hole in your arm, like a metal jacketed bullet does, but
instead it just took your whole arm off. You need to know things
like the fact that General Grant had his meat cooked well-done
because he hated the sight of blood. What is interesting to you
about your story?”
Can you sustain that interest over the years it may take you
to write it? You don’t want to lose sight of the spark and go
down into the garden of forking paths. How is your idea so
great, exciting, and compelling? How can you pull the reader
through to the end? Do you think you can sell it? What is new
about your approach? Will a producer want to walk barefoot
across broken glass to make your movie?
Since, chances are no one will ever make your movie... you
need to write something that really, really, really means some-
thing to you... so, when no one makes your movie, you won’t
feel like you wasted your time. BUT, if it really, really, really
means something to you, there’s a decent chance someone
may make your movie. Funny how that works.
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