screenwriting // Posts tagged as "screenwriting"
Trite Tropes
Cinema is a language with its own conventions. The audience must be familiar with certain patterns, even unconsciously, for the transfer of visuals to register properly. Establishing a scene with a wide shot to get our bearings, not crossing the 180-degree axis, keeping the flow of action moving in a single screen direction – folks ...
Fairy Dust Between the Sprockets
Having just been reduced to a wide-eyed nine-year-old all over again by witnessing E.T.: The Extraterrestrial in its high definition glory, and awing at the recent digital majesty of Wall•e, it brought to mind the question: what makes for magical cinema? What are the ingredients of timelessness? What’s the big diff between The Incredibles and ...
P.O.V.
My guy has multiple personality disorder, and I was thinking about doing each chapter from a different point of view. . . That’s a lot of personalities. . . Or do you mean rotating through the cycle of a few personalities over and over? At least that way we could get to know them better ...
Scrivenings
. . . looking to maybe crank something out over the summer. Not talking the columned A/V stuff for commercials, but what’s the best software to write feature screenplays in? One that catches sentence-ending prepositions? I kid; I kid. Honestly, I don’t know, because I haven’t tried that many, but I can share what works ...
Perjiarism
She stole a piece of him. Now he wants it back. That’s the tagline to what is now my least-favorite movie, based on one of my all-time favorite novels. When you understand that the woman who “wrote” and directed it thieved it literally scene-for-scene from a man’s ten-years-published novel, you’ll appreciate its irony. I wonder ...
Book Learnin vs. Dirty Hands
I would love to hear, from your point of view, whether a fine arts degree worth its pursuit. Our province has many opportunities for folks in the creative community to work in the industry — both amateur and professional — and I am beginning to hear from people who work in the field that hands-on ...
Fester McDumas
My character names tend to the bizarro. [examples retracted] The rest of my prose isn’t that far out there, pretty accessible stuff, I just want them remembered, especially cuz there tend to be a lot of them to keep straight. Am I being too neurotic? Just like song titles often come to me before their ...
Going on Location
Talking writing here. Location is not simply what “frames the picture.” As the scribe of your story, if you consider yourself its cinematographer or cameraman and the reader as projectionist, then location is your film stock. (Yeah, so it’s also your art department, but let’s stick to one analogy for now.) It provides the context ...
Movies I’d Pay to See
In high-concept Hollywood, idea is king. The single-sentence pitch. Here are a few of my aborted attempts at “star vehicles” for celebrities who could use a career-energizing role. Normally I don’t like to just give away my golden tickets for free, but I trust you people. As Tom Cruise’s detective character nears retirement, he must ...
Literary Ventriloquism
so what’s your take on how to write good, engaging, and realistic dialogue? i’ve heard some writers say that you should never use “he saids” and “she saids”. other writers say you HAVE to identify who’s talking at least every sixth line. some say you shouldn’t even use quotation marks, because they just get in ...
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