Why does it take so long to tell a meaningful story? Most movies require at least two hours. Novels sometimes need hundreds of pages. Is there a reason why successful authors can’t cut to the chase and simply tell an audience what their story is really about?

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A Story Limit is one of the most important things you can put into your story. Whether it be a Timelock or an Optionlock, a writer must let the audience know when the story will be over; to leave this out is tantamount to lying to your audience. And while it is important to pick one of these and stick to it, it turns out that there are some stories that are a bit more nebulous when it comes to defining how their endings will come about.

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Stories come to an end for one of two reasons: the characters either run out of time or they run out of options. Being told that there are only two ways of bringing about the end of a story can seem very stifling to an author; how can you possibly reduce the entirety of narrative fiction down to an either/or choice?

As with all things, a slight change in perspective can make all the difference.

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Although the software is not properly set up for it, you can create the structure of your story based on how you want your audience to receive your story, i.e. how you want your story to feel to them. In order to do this, you need to understand the connections that some appreciations have with one another.

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By far, the most beautifully animated film ever created just so happens to also be the most entertaining. With stunning art direction that rivals the best of live action and animation that would make legendary Disney animator Milt Kahl weep with pride, Ratatouille is the closest thing to perfection we may ever see.

So why then does the film seem so overly long?

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For those who’ve seen this 1994 action classic, the biggest complaint always centers around that ludicrous fight on the subway. The story was supposed to be about a bus that can’t drop below 50 M.P.H., right? Then how the heck did we end up on a subway? Wasn’t the story supposed to be over by now? It was…

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Daily Dramatica has exploded over the past couple of months, nearly doubling the amount of subscribers since the first of the year. Most of this is due, I’m sure, to the fact that posts appear practically every day of the week. In addition, a sincere attempt has been made to provide really valuable information when it comes to structuring a screenplay (or any story for that matter). There were, however, some helpful posts that appeared years ago when the interest was not as great…

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Saw and High Noon. On the surface these two films could not be more different. One deals with brutal psychological torture while the other concerns a town marshall standing up for what is right. Yet, both films are brought to their respective climaxes by the same dramatic device.

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All this theory. All these terms. All of it can really get in the way of writing a great story. And isn’t that why you bought that laptop and that screenwriting software in the first place? To share with the world your own personal viewpoint on life?

Guess what? You can throw it all away…as long as you incorporate these three things into your story.

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Something I wrote about a looong time ago, was what some of the biggest things were that typical authors leave out of their stories. To me, that’s one of the coolest aspects of Dramatica - it helps to point out the missing pieces or holes in your story. Previously I had listed the [...]

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