Writing the Personal Triumph
Having examined both Triumphant Stories and Tragic Stories, the focus shifts now to stories with a more sophisticated ending. These last two categories represent my favorite kind of story. Why? Because to me they more closely resemble real life.
June 28th, 2009 | Story Structure
John August on Bucking ConventionsIn the latest from Making Of, screenwriter John August becomes even cooler with his advice for storytellers to “push against” the conventions of modern screenwriting. You gotta love anyone who can’t keep a straight face when mentioning the Hero’s “Call to Adventure.”
+1 for the advice to kill your hero on page 50!
Writers on Action-Adventure - July 1Tonight finds the first in a series of screenwriting events presented by The Writer’s Guild and Write Brothers. Big time screenwriter David S. Goyer (The Dark Knight) will be on hand.
Kurtzman and Orci on PlanningShort snippet about outlining a story from the screenwriters of Star Trek (which I thought was great). While they agree on the importance of spontaneity, they talk about how hard that is without some kind of direction (e.g., an outline).
Some writers prefer to write first and then outline second. Others prefer building the framework first, and then writing within that. Sounds like these guys prefer the latter (as do I, which means I’m in good company!).
Richard Kelly on Writing Donnie DarkoThe writer/director of Donnie Darko (featured in my post regarding stories of personal triumph) discusses the exhilaration of finishing a script and the time it takes to find your own voice. He also talks about how he discovered how the film fit into the Hero’s Journey mythology…but then thankfully suggests corrupting that formula!
Darren Aronofsky on ScreenwritingThe writer/director of The Wrestler elaborates on his technique for getting thoughts to paper. Besides starting out with the thematics, he also believes that screenwriting is more akin to sculpting than anything else; an author must constantly whittle away at the whole rather than obssesively focus on the minutia. My favorite new term? The “Muscle Draft.”
What to Do When You FailMysteryMan on not giving up:
An inevitable part of life is that you will achieve varying levels of success and yes, that includes failure. So what do you do when this happens to you? You take the lumps and keep writing. You stay obsessively devoted to the craft. You find stories you’re passionate about and you apply everything you know about the craft to make each and every story you touch reach its fullest potential.
How to Write a Tragedy
Nobody likes a sad movie.
When audiences go to see a movie they want to be uplifted, right? They want to escape and forget about their daily problems. They want to laugh and they want to feel good. Therefore, if you want to make a movie that everyone loves, it makes sense that you would want to avoid a sad ending at all costs..or so you would think.
June 08th, 2009 | Story StructureHow to End a Movie
There are basically four different ways you can end a movie: Happy, Sad, Bittersweet Happy, and Bittersweet Sad. Afraid that might be a little reductive? Not when you realize that there are a zillion different ways of presenting these endings. So how do you determine exactly what ending a story might have?
It’s really quite simple.
June 02nd, 2009 | Story StructureAndrew Stanton InterviewThe director of Finding Nemo and Wall-E discusses his work at Pixar and the reasons why it may have been so successful (short answer: the studio is engineered to encourage creativity). A great 35+ minute interview.
Reconsidering Children of Men
By far, the most popular page on this site (besides the 404 error page because seemingly, people can’t get enough pictures of Pocahontas!) is Children of Men: Analysis. Some people have problems with the ending of this film, some don’t. I used to. In fact, that was my motivation for writing the original article. But since then, my feelings have changed on the subject. Why?
Because of reader feedback.
May 25th, 2009 | Story AnalysisYou can find even more articles in the archives.
