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Dialogue is one of the trickier aspects of writing because, unlike elements like structure or format, there are no hard-and-fast rules to act as a guide. But we still know dialogue is good or bad when we hear it. Dialogue is one of the main lures for attracting name talent (i.e. movie stars) to a project. Given that financing is often contingent on name attachments, the level of dialogue can have a direct impact on a script getting traction toward production. One of the main things we want to achieve is to strike a balance between clarity and character. In...

The title is vital. It is the first point of contact between the script and the reader, and between the movie and the audience. When the audience comes to the theater and they look at the one-sheets and the marquee, the title is both the hook and the handle by which they shall make their ultimate decision: Which of these movies will they see? So let’s talk about titles. A good title accomplishes several tasks within just a word or few. The first task is to reflect the genre. We want to tell the audience what kind of experience they...

Every once in a while we’ll see a film in which the protagonist dies at the end. It’s a tricky maneuver to pull off, but by looking at movies that make this bold move, we can see some patterns in what works, and in which types of stories this kind of thing tends to occur. We most often see dead protagonists in period action-adventure, typically in the key of “epic.” In this very specific genre we find several examples: BRAVEHEART, SPARTACUS, GLADIATOR, 300. There is a certain high, bloody drama to seeing the protagonists of films of this nature die...

Most everyone is familiar with the standard three-act structure. We’ve got our first-10; inciting incident on pg 17; plot point one on pg 30; midpoint turn on pg 50; plot point two on ppg 70-75; climax, and denouement. Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat offers a slightly different model, but it’s pretty much in the same ballpark. There is another structural model. It has no name, so I’ve just been calling it the “20/80” because, simply put, plot point lands on pg 20, and plot point two is on pg 80. It’s the minor key of screenplay structure. The other hallmark...

“Tracking” is the term used to describe consistency within character development and behavior within the story. Simply put, it means making sure that the things the characters say and do make sense within the context of the narrative and their established personalities. Here’s a dumb example: We have a scene in which our protagonist says he hates peanut butter. Then later in the script he’s sitting at a kitchen table using a butter knife to eat peanut butter out of the jar. We get bumped by the beat because we’re left to think, “Wait, didn’t he say he hates peanut...