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clear writing, inspiration, scene work, screenwriting, storytelling - April 17, 2019

Ass in the Chair: Productivity in Screenwriting

There’s an old truism that having written is greater than writing, and it’s true. Having a completed script is a great feeling. Having to write that script is a terrible feeling. While writers vary on how much they enjoy the physical process of writing, many writers agree that the actual writing part is the least fun element of the process. Part of the reason writing can be so laborious is because, the longer someone writes screenplays, the more items come across their mental checklist with each scene. In any given scene, you may ask yourself… Am I advancing the story?...

Act II Is Hard

Writing a great second act might be the toughest part of screenwriting. A great first act is just establishing the concept of the film. A great ending tends to function as a mirror of the first act, paying off the concept. But what about the second act? The challenge of the second act is to organically complicate the concept and increasingly challenge the hero, for the longest stretch of the script. Often, this boils down to having a potent engine for the story (and the story’s conflict). Let’s consider some examples of recent hit movies, and how they handled this...

Is Your Story Clear? Lessons from Our Children

Clarity of storytelling in screenwriting is easy to ignore. It’s deceptively difficult to master. Story clarity often means the “boring” stuff. Ethan Hunt must recover the Rabbit’s Foot, etc. One thing we’ve noticed at ScriptArsenal is that a lot of the scripts we’re reading are rich in the “exciting” stuff (action, dialogue, world-building) but sometimes the basics of story are left vague or softly defined. Once you have children, you spend a LOT of time watching children’s cartoons. My daughter loves THE CAT IN THE HAT, for instance. In every single episode, in the first scene, the characters lay out the episode’s...

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