Not too long ago, I was writing with a friend who I quickly found out isn’t funny.  Needless to say, it didn’t work out since we were working on a comedy script.  It’s not always easy to tell whether or not someone can write funny.  It’s said that comedy is the hardest thing to write [...]

In Canada, screenwriters have to learn to adapt to various genres mostly because there’s not a lot of work.  The more flexible you are, the more employable you are.  But in Hollywood, they expect writers to have a ‘brand’.  How would you market yourself? In advertising, they focus on what’s called the ‘brand essence’ and [...]

By now you have the series act breaks, story lines and story arc.  You’re not done yet!  You need to break down each act into scenes and note what happens when.  If you’re thinking, “I already noted what happens when while looking at the story arc”, you may have noted the major plot points for [...]

You’ve broken down the skeleton or act structure and figured out the story lines so now you have to map out what happens in each act for each story line.  This is the story arc. Story arc is simply knowing where your story is going and how it maps out over the course of the [...]

So now you’ve got your series act breaks down.  Your skeleton is there.  Now you have to determine how many story lines are in an episode. What is a story line? A story line is a self-contained story that follows the relationship between two or more people dealing with a single problem, likely to be [...]