Tag Archives: writing structure

A PROPHET… And You’re Worried YOUR Character Is Unlikable!

There are many reasons to brave the shocking violence of Thomas Bidigain and Jacques Audiard’s new film, A Prophet (Un Prophéte).  This brilliantly crafted screenplay, which takes you into the brutal world of a French prison through its main character, Malik, makes the prison world of The Shawshank Redemption look like daycare.  As you follow [...]
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Final Challenge Check In

Wow!  It’s hard to believe we’ve already reached the official end of the 2010 Screenwriting Challenge.  To everyone who participated, congratulations!  You’ve made a huge commitment to your writing life that will continue to pay dividends far into the future. Thanks to everyone who came out for the fabulous Challenge Party last night.  We had a [...]
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Challenge Check In #2: What To Do When It's Just Not Coming

We’re now more than halfway through the 2010 Screenwriting Challenge. For those of you who are still writing every day, congratulations! You’re taking a giant step toward becoming the writer you want to be. But what if you’re struggling? What if your writing schedule is spotty or uneven? What if there were [...]
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Power Your Plot: With These Vital Structural Elements

POWER YOUR PLOT With These Vital Structural Elements With 2009 just ending and a New Year beginning, I thought it would be a good time to talk about completions.   Not just the kind of completions you make in your life.  The kinds of completions you make in your scenes. Completions are the single most important element in distinguishing [...]
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2010 Screenwriting Challenge

Begin Your New Year WRITE!  With Jacob Krueger’s 2nd Annual 2010 SCREENWRITING CHALLENGE Why The Challenge? Let’s face it, the holidays are a brutal time for writers. We all do our best writing when we get into a rhythm. But during the holiday season that rhythm can be impossible to maintain.  Schedules get jammed with Christmas parties, gifts to [...]
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Is Your Character An Adjective or a Verb?

It's no wonder that some of the greatest writers began their careers as actors. The art of writing and acting have always been profoundly intertwined. That's because structurally, movies grow out of character. And character is the thing that actors understand best. So what is character from an actor's perspective? And how can that help you as a writer?
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The Writer's Most Dangerous Desire

It may be hard to tell from some of the stuff you see coming out of Hollywood, but believe it or not, no one sets out to be a mediocre writer. No writer dreams of writing that crappy screenplay with the unintelligible plot. No writer fantasizes about creating paper thin characters, canned dialogue, or predictable plot points. As writers, we share a common desire: we want to write great scripts, fascinating characters, brilliant dialogue, and breathtaking stories that catch people and won't let them go. We want to say something that matters to us, have our voices heard, and create the kind of movies we grew up loving. All writers want to be great writers. Unfortunately, for many writers this need to create something great is actually the biggest obstacle to their writing...
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What Happens Next? Getting Un-Stuck When You Are Lost In Your Story

I was recently giving a lecture on using hypnosis to combat writer's block, and was asked a profound question by one of the students. She explained that her block had nothing to do with fear of writing, procrastination, the desire to get every scene "right" or any of the other common causes of writer's block that students were describing. Her problem that she simply didn't know what happened next in her story. She was just plain stuck. And she felt like until she figured it out, she couldn't write another word. How many writers have felt EXACTLY like that? More than you think. It's easy to convince ourselves that if we don't know what is going to happen, that there's no way to move forward in our writing. But the truth is exactly the opposite. And if you want proof, all you have to do is think about your life...
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Ready to TRASH your whole Script? Not Until You Read This Article.

The other day, a student asked me a profound question. It's a problem faced by so many writers that I decided to include it and my answer in this month's newsletter. What do you do when you're so fed up with your writing, you're ready to scrap your whole project? Whoa! Pull those pages out of the trash can-- at least until you try these simple tricks to re-energize your writing and get your project rocking again...
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The Myth of Three Act Screenplay Structure (or, "Why Am I Lost In My Second Act?")

For about as long as there have been screenwriting books, young writers have been taught that movies have a three act structure. Each act is viewed as 30 to 60 page chunk of the plot and when they're all assembled together, they provide a beginning, middle, and an end for your story. Countless script doctors, critics, teachers, and producers have used this structure to break down great movies, and analyze how they are put together. But while this may be a great way of looking at a finished script from a critical perspective, it's not particularly useful to screenwriters. When you're beginning a new project, it's not exactly groundbreaking news that your story is going to need a beginning, middle and an end. The real challenge is figuring out how to structure your story in a way that captures the essence of your character's journey. Trying to use three act structure to create the story of your movie is like trying to sprint through a marathon. You may start off strong, but by the time you hit the middle of the story, you'll most likely be running out of steam...
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