Go Into The Story

Daily Dialogue — January 15, 2019

“Little pigs, little pigs, let me come in. Not by the hair of your chiny-chin-chin? Well then I’ll huff and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your…

Story Summaries: From Loglines to Beat Sheets

Learn six different types of story summaries and how to use them to develop your scripted projects.

An Argument Against Screenplay Formulas (Part 1): They are selling you a lie

“Instead of thinking about Story as a sort of paint-by-numbers formula, we are best served by starting here: Characters.”

2019 Dialogue-Writing Challenge: Day 10

A chance for you to work on your dialogue chops and win free prizes!

On Writing

“If you have to find devices to coax yourself to stay focused on writing, perhaps you should not be writing what you’re writing. And if…

Daily Dialogue — January 14, 2019

March is seating in the toilet, smoking while reading a magazine. He sees a pair of feet stop in front of his stall.

Reader Question: What makes a movie a big budget and a small budget?

There are critical choices a writer can make at the script stage which directly influence a project’s budget… and its potential viability…

Go Into The Story Script Reading & Analysis: “A Quiet Place”

The entire 6 part series delving into hit horror movie.

Script To Screen: “Moonrise Kingdom”

A memorable scene from the 2012 movie Moonrise Kingdom, written and directed by Wes Anderson.

Interview: M. Night Shyamalan

A 55-minute conversation with the writer-director of the movie Glass.

Daily Dialogue — January 13, 2019

Blake: You’re talking about what. You’re talking about… Bitching about that sale you shot, some sonofabitch who don’t wanna buy land, some…

“Create a solid concept, mold your believable characters, tell their story, the rest will follow.”

Yet another reason to embrace characters. They will *always* function as an audience member’s conduit *into* a story.

Adding to your observations, stories are a safe place within which to experience our deepest fears.

Here’s a thought: Imagine you are part of a tribe, it’s nighttime, and you, as an adult, are sitting there with other parents and children…

Saturday Hot Links

Time for the 375th installment of Saturday Hot Links, your week’s essential reading about movies, TV, streaming, Hollywood, and other…

Script Analysis: “A Quiet Place” — Part 6: Takeaways

Read the script for the hit horror movie and analyze it all this week.

Daily Dialogue theme next week: Bathroom

Join the Daily Dialogue crew: 3,894 consecutive days and counting.

Interview: Paul Schrader

An excellent conversation with the writer-director of First Reformed.

Daily Dialogue — January 12, 2019

Tess McGill: Look, you, maybe you’ve got everyone around here fooled with this saint act you have going, but do not ever speak to me again…

Another thought: I always tell my students to make every word count.

So I may tell my students from now on: Put your dialogue through the Quiet Place test. Does it absolutely *have* to be there?

Mark, you know well my theory that movies are almost always ‘asking’ this question of key…

Side note: It’s surprising how many movies have characters asking some variation of this question, e.g., ‘Who are you?’

This just in from Beck & Woods re Lee / Regan / who is Protagonist question:

“We’ve always viewed Regan and Lee as shared protagonists. Each has an issue communicating with the other, and therefore their entire arc…

Character Type: Addict

“The struggle between self-control and the pull of the addiction. It represents conflict on a fundamental level, powerful physical needs…

Script Analysis: “A Quiet Place” — Part 5: Dialogue

Read the script for the hit horror movie and analyze it all this week.

2019 Dialogue-Writing Challenge: Day 9

A chance for you to work on your dialogue chops and win free prizes!

Writing and the Creative Life: Writing sprint? How about a writing walk!

If you frequent Twitter — and more specifically writers on Twitter — you may have run across the idea of a writing sprint. I first…