Rage Against The Page

Playing What if? is what writers do. Well, fiction writers. For factual writers the game is more along the lines of Why that? Daniel Sokol at BBC News explores the philosophical angle of the What if? exercise. A runaway trolley car is hurtling down a track where it will kill five people. You are standing on a bridge above the track and, aware of the imminent disaster, you decide to jump on the track to block the trolley car. Although you will die, the five people will be saved. Just before your leap, you realise that you are too light to stop the trolley. Next to you, a fat man is standing on the very edge of the bridge. He would certainly block the trolley, although he would undoubtedly die from the impact. A small nudge and he would fall right onto the track below. No one would ever know. Should you push him?

Writer's Block. No such thing. It's a misnomer, IMO. Nothing is 'blocking' you from writing, except maybe if last week you had a falling out with the WGA and this week you woke up with your hands encased in a block of concrete. Then the phrase takes on a new and alarmingly accurate meaning. I believe there are really only two reasons you're not writing when you know you should be writing: You cannot focus This is a legitimate reason and a common one: you can't write because you cannot narrow your focus enough to get 'in the zone' for writing. It could be disruptive noise from outside your room. It could be a physical problem, like headache or illness, constantly interrupting you with discomfort or pain. Or, it could be a mental problem. We all have our extended periods of ups and downs due to what's going on in our lives. There's not a lot you can do about the downs except wait them out, doing whatever you can to ensure they pass as quickl...

Increasingly, audiences are staying away from cinemas. There are many reasons for this, but you can point to one issue as the cinema killer: viewing choice. With the shrinking window between a film's cinema release and its DVD release, and affordability of home cinemas, it comes down to this: is the film worth seeing in the cinema or are you happy to wait a few months to watch it at home? Let's weigh up the risks and costs: Watch at home You decide when the movie starts You decide if you want to sit through ads before the movie You decide if you want to watch it quietly alone or raucously with a bunch of friends You decide how loud you want the audio You decide the price and type of snacks you purchase to accompany the movie; or you can decide nobody eats during the movie You can ask the audience to switch off their mobile phones You can decide the movie is not so hot, stop it, and return later to watch the rest of it Watch at the cinema You risk people talking, chewing, slurpi...

Chris Farlekas discusses the WGA's list of the 101 greatest screenplays of all-time and some of their authors, e.g. heyday scribes Koch and Mankiewicz. Of Koch and Casablanca : As he wrote, he didn't know which man Ingrid Bergman would end up with. He felt it needed to be Paul Henreid, her husband and a great resistance leader against the Nazis. The studio was pressuring for the more conventional leading-man-gets-leading-lady resolution. Koch told me if he'd lost the fight, he believed the movie "might still have been an entertaining melodrama, but certainly not the classic it became."

Reprinted with permission. by Kal Bishop Without denigrating the work and contribution of Syd Field to the art of screenwriting, it is about time many screenwriters moved on. Syd Field gave us the plot point - a clearer definition of what was previously known as the “twist” - as well as other concepts such as the “pinch” and midpoint. His work is still a valuable start point for screenwriters. Syd Field’s midpoint analysis moved us towards four-act structure, which is well established in many cultures, whereas western culture still tends to dwell on three acts. It seems as though Syd Field had some issues with the mid-point, one of them being that the inclusion of the mid point and consequently four act structure does not fit well with all stories – his attempt at preciseness resulted in a consequential lack of broadness and hence greater critical analysis as a template. Hollywood has implicitly accepted four act structure – most movies now have a high point midway – usually a catastro...

Reprinted with permission. by: Don Bledsoe The screenplay you've pounded out on your trusty word processor is finished at last! Before the reader even looks at the title of your script, it must pass the "rifle test." The rifle test tells a professional in seconds whether the script is professionally written or not. Is the screenplay in the right format? Does it look like it was written by a professional screenwriter? Is the script vertical? The Rifle Test Hollywood screenwriters know that a reader, agent or producer can tell instantly by fanning the pages back to front if your script is professionally written and in the proper format. Your script will not even get a read at an agency or get studio coverage if it doesn't look right. The typical development executive reads 35-50 scripts a week on their own time, away from the office. After reading hundreds and hundreds of scripts, they can see at a glance if it looks right. If it's not right, it's dumped. It...

Reprinted with permission. by: Lynne Pembroke Over the years, I’ve found that new screenwriters frequently have confusions and misunderstandings on the proper way to write slug lines, also known as master scene headings. This article covers the basics of writing industry accepted screenplay slug lines. Tips On Slug Lines Scene headings or slug lines, as they are commonly called, are a widely accepted convention of “spec” or “master scene” screenplay form. Over the years, I’ve found that new writers frequently have confusions and misunderstandings on the subject, despite having read a basic book or two on the craft aspects of screenwriting. Hence, the reason for this article. Every time the “where” or the “when” of your story changes, it’s expected that you’ll reorient the reader as to location and time of day with a new slug line. A slug line is composed of three parts: INT. or EXT. Is it an interior or exterior scene? WHERE The physical location or name of the set where the action of ...

Intro: In my earlier post, How to be a screenwriter in 3 easy steps! , I point out that to become a competent screenwriter you need to master two important talents: writing and storycrafting. I do not believe they are the same thing. Anyone can learn to write effectively, but that alone won't turn them into an expert storyteller. On the other hand, poor writing skills will always sabotage the work of a good storyteller. As a writer, you must have a compelling vision and you must commit it to words in a compelling manner. As a screenwriter, you need to write your story so that the words become transparent and all that remains is the experience of your story . Your chances of selling that screen story diminish just a little every time a reader of your screenplay gets jerked back to reality because of poor writing or misspelling. I knew a writer who produced thousands of pages of manuscript. The problem was, he had a poor grasp of punctuation. A common mistake of his that turned up e...

TreePad Lite is a free program I've used for many years, and I can't imagine being without it. If you craft stories, and you have no satisfactory method for managing your projects, you need this program. It is truly free (no nags, ads, malware), it's robust, and it has a long and distinguished history. So what is it exactly? TreePad is a text editor that organizes your information into a tree structure (hierarchy). There are many bells and whistles, of course, but essentially that's what it does. And it does it very well. For each of my writing projects I maintain a master treepad file/database containing various branches for things like: Character concordance Plot ideas Research notes and links Story treatment, breakdown, drafts There are some simple but important features in the program that make it enormously useful. Keyboard shortcuts is one of those. You don't want to stop typing every few seconds to reach for the mouse. Another is hyperlinks. Although TreePa...

Intro: Paul's article is nominally pitched at writing children's stories, but his advice applies equally to screenwriting and storytelling. Don't let the simplicity of this list fool you. If you pay careful attention to each of these story elements, you will have a crowd pleaser on your hands, no matter what medium you use to tell your story. Reprinted with permission. ---------- Writing a Child Story: 8 Elements to Consider by: Paul Arinaga While writing an entertaining child story is obviously more art than science, most successful child stories pay attention to the following 8 elements. #1: Theme A good child story has an underlying theme. The underlying theme of "Peter and the Wolf," for example, is "don't tell lies" or "be honest." The underlying theme of "The Sneetches" by Dr. Seuss is "don't be racist" or "all (Sneetches) are created equal." A theme can be the moral of the story, or an insight or vi...

Reprinted with permission. by Gordy Hoffman I am lucky. I have no problems coming up with very good ideas for movies. If I never had another idea for the rest of my life, I would not make a sizable dent in the ones I already have. Screenwriters who struggle with coming up with an idea tend to be visibly annoyed when I tell them this. I think I’m comfortable sharing this with others because I know movie ideas really mean nothing and please nobody in and of themselves, so there’s not much to brag about. I guess you can get lucky and sell an idea, but in terms of what’s important, a motion picture screened in front of people, a great idea is simply a member of the orchestra that achieves that vision. I’m not sure where all the ideas come from, but I can tell you where I was, and by telling you this, perhaps this will help you come up with your idea. First, you should know what you want to write. A feature? For the studios? For yourself to direct? Maybe a low budget script for someone else...

Plans exist only to go horribly awry. Want to bore your audience? Have the hero map out a plan and then have the hero execute it flawlessly. Let the yawns commence. The more that goes wrong for your hero, the more chance of conflict, and the more dramatic your story. Having your hero map out a plan sets up expectations in the audience about what should happen if everything goes to plan. Of course, your job as a storycrafter is to ensure very little goes according to plan. Your secondary task is to figure out how to make things go awry in unexpected and thrilling ways. Example (from memory): La Femme Nikita. Her boss instructs her, "Once you make the hit, head for the bathroom. You can escape through the window." The assassin makes the hit, flees to the bathroom, yanks open the window — it's bricked up from the outside!

Reprinted with permission. by: Henrik Holmberg A horror movie has certain rules. If you break too many the audience will be disappointed. This is a very short, no fluff, blueprint of how to write a horror script. The Hook. Start with a bang. Step right into a suspense scene. ("Scream" opens with a terrifying sequence with Drew Barrymore on the phone with a killer) The Flaw. Introduce your hero. Give him a flaw. Before you can put your hero in jeopardy we must care for him. We must want our hero to succeed. So make him human. (In "Signs" Mel Gibson plays a priest who has lost his faith after his wife died) The Fear. A variant of The Flaw. The hero has a fear. Maybe a fear of heights, or claustrophobia. (In "Jaws" Roy Scheider has a fear of water. At the end he has to conquer his fear by going out onto the ocean to kill the shark) No Escape. Have your hero at an isolated location where he can't escape the horror. (Like the hotel in "The Shining...

By Gregory McNamee Sun Apr 9, 9:37 PM ET [snip] LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Want to make it as a Hollywood screenwriter? Then (1) buy a lot of index cards and fill your walls with exactingly mapped-out plots and characters, (2) don't show anyone your first draft, and (3) don't tell the director where to put the camera. Plenty of directors, producers and actors might disagree, but most writers quietly believe (or wish) that they are central to the filmmaking enterprise, a sentiment that runs through the interviews Kevin Scott collects in "Screenwriters' Masterclass: Screenwriters Talk About Their Greatest Movies." But more than argue their importance, those interviewees pass along plenty of helpful hints about the writer's work, so that Scott's book lives up to its title. If you need some motivation, head over to Yahoo and read this article. You'll sigh with relief when reminded that even A-list screenwriters wrestle constantly with the dr...

Here is a Wikipedia article that hit the brick wall of 'AFD' ("Wikipedia is not a crystal ball"). It references my Alien 5 blog piece in the External Links section, so I figured I would keep a copy on RageAgainstThePage . Introduction The Alien movie franchise began with Ridley Scott 's 1979 film of the same name. The franchise hatched three more installments: Aliens ( 1986 ), Alien³ ( 1992 ), and Alien: Resurrection ( 1997 ). In 2004, a cross-over installment Alien vs. Predator landed in cinemas. Isn't Alien vs. Predator the 5th film in the Alien series? No, it's not considered part of the core Alien franchise, therefore the tag Alien 5 refers instead to the unproduced fifth film in the canonical Alien movie series. Paul W. S. Anderson , writer and director of Alien vs. Predator , explains: "What happened to Alien 5 anyway?! Who's doing that?!" he laughs, before adding that he thinks AvP shouldn't be considered the fift...