Screenwriting Tips

Act II, clear writing, screenwriting tips, storytelling - April 03, 2019

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...

Script Openings: A STAR IS BORN

Opening your script in a way that hooks the audience is an existentially important factor for all screenwriters. Especially at the earlier stages of your career, having that great hook into the script is likely the difference between the person on the other side of the table (a development executive, agent, manager, producer, director) putting the script down or reading on. The recent film A STAR IS BORN (nominated for eight Oscars this year) has an incredibly compelling first half hour. It easily could not have. Bradley Cooper is on record as saying that close friends of his urged him...

Read more

patience, Punisher, slow burn, storytelling - February 01, 2019

Case Study: Patience in THE PUNISHER

Patience is an increasingly challenging value to apply in screenwriting. It might be even more challenging in writing for television. With the viewing audience increasingly fractured, and suffering from a shorter attention span than ever, it can be tempting to dive straight into action, whatever the “action” of your narrative is. The newest incarnation of “The Punisher” character would seem to lean into this type of instant gratification storytelling. Frank Castle aka “The Punisher”, at face value, might appear to be a pretty superficial character. He’s here to drink beer and kick ass, and he’s all out of beer. But...

Read more

storytelling, surface plot, thematic, theme - September 25, 2018

Theme: What’s Your Story Actually About?

Let’s take a standard plot, absent any true theme. A cop must stop a serial killer. You can dress up the serial killer with any sort of elaborate methodology or ritual, and give the cop all sorts of gritty edge. None of that means anything other than window dressing unless it’s in the service of a substantive thematic thrust.

Plot doesn’t stand the test of time in the same way theme does.

Read more