*Spoiler alert: this article discusses the endings to popular movies The  Surprise Twist Ending Everyone hates the movie that ends with the hero waking up in bed realizing that it was all a dream.  They don’t hate it if it’s later revealed that it WASN’T a dream.  That’s an effective twist, but it’s been done. [...]

How do you know if your ending works?  When writing any story, you are open to so many possibilities, it’s often impossible to know what ending to choose.  Actually, you are open to the following possible endings: Good/bad guy wins (happy fairy tale) Good/bad guy loses but wins something unexpected (bittersweet ending) Good/bad guy loses [...]

As I mentioned in my Expo Survival Guide, I would be making a list of  ‘qualifiers’ necessary to make it as a Hollywood screenwriter.  Some speakers said “anyone can do it if I can”, while others were more inclined to believe that “only the sane and dedicated have a shot”.  Honestly, not just anyone can [...]

Happy Thanksgiving, Canada! See you next week!

Erik Bork – Throwing Rocks at your Characters Erik was another highly effective seminar leader.  Most of his material dealt with structure and came from Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat, which is a really helpful book on structure.  The one problem I had with Snyder’s book was that after reading it, I found it screwed [...]