Notes from a Screenreader: Penn & Tellering
Photo via Go Into the Story. Here’s a great magic trick. A magician carries a dollhouse onstage and places it on a table. He says it’s a haunted dollhouse. Every time he takes the cloth away after barely an instant, the haunted dollhouse has produced a fire in the fireplace or a bloody doll massacre or...
READ MORENotes from a Screenreader: GOOOOAAAALLLL!
Photo via Go Into the Story. Many a spec script hits page 20 at a dead run, then pulls a hamstring and limps all the way through the second act while the writer chips away at what the story is actually about. It’s painfully slow to read. All of that should be resolved in rewrites,...
READ MORENotes from a Screenreader: Bang a Gong
Photo via Go Into the Story. Theme is the beating heart of the screenplay, the proposition about the human condition that your story explores—the big issues. Love. Faith. Resilience. Trust. Power. Courage. All the goosebumpy things. The theme, that single, simple thesis that creates clarity and scope and resonance through the arcs of your story,...
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