Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t: Why That Is And What You Can Do About It

Here’s the nutshell version: 1) Hero starts in Ordinary World. 2) Hero receives Call to Adventure. 3) Hero rejects Call. 4) Hero meets Mentor. Mentor gives hero courage to accept Call.

suffered enough and thought deeply enough about her experience to be able to process it into something that is of value to others, even if only as entertainment.

A great epiphanal moment not only defines the stakes and the jeopardy for the protagonist and for the audience, but it restates the theme and answers the question, “What is this story about?”

This stuff sounds like formula, I know. But it is the marrow and sinew of storytelling, and if you don’t believe me, please check with Mr. W. Shakespeare.

The character must undergo a radical change from the start of the film to the finish. She has to have an arc. She must evolve.

And even though toiling in the Mad Ave trenches may have been selling out, working for the Man, prostituting one’s talent etc., had I tried instead to be simon-pure and work on real writing only, my corpse would’ve been found in a cardboard shelter under a freeway overpass.

The enemy is Resistance. Resistance will use time against you. It will try to overawe you with the magnitude of the task and the mass of days, weeks, and months necessary to complete it.

Never write me a sex scene where nothing happens but the sex. Always have something else going on at the same time.

How can you tell when you’ve got a good Inciting Incident? When the movie’s climax is embedded within it.