A Hollywood producer friend of mine said the biggest frustration he has with new writers is that they don’t write from the heart so a lot of their scripts are just bullshit. You might be passionate about your idea, but if the story itself doesn’t come from a deep-rooted need to understand something about human [...]

So now you’ve realized your lead isn’t leading your story.  How do you fix it? There are two questions you need to ask: What is my story and whose story is it? Once you know your lead isn’t leading, that’s half the battle.  Figure out what he needs versus what he wants or thinks he [...]

One thing that leads to big script problems with new writers is when their lead character isn’t leading the story.  How do you know this is what’s happening and how do you fix it? Why your lead character must lead your story. In most stories, the lead is the protagonist who is also typically the [...]

Continued from yesterday Awkward, Unnatural Dialogue We’ve all read scripts or seen movies where we thought, “Nobody talks like that.”  It takes us out of the scene, ruins the moment for us.  Sometimes it’s the result of exposition, but sometimes, it’s just awkward phrasing.  New writers are so eager to get stuff down on paper, [...]

Part II will address points 4 & 5 and be published at 10AM tomorrow. It’s one thing to be told to write sizzling dialogue, but quite another to recognize when the dialogue you’ve written doesn’t.  There are essentially five reasons your dialogue is flat: on-the-nose: describes exactly what’s happening in the scene no subtext: character [...]