Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

Research not only wins the war on cliché, it’s the key to victory over fear and its cousin, depression.

The final cause for the decline of story runs very deep. Values, the positive/negative charges of life, are at the soul of our art. The writer shapes story around a perception of what’s worth living for, what’s worth dying for, what’s foolish to pursue, the meaning of justice, truth—the essential values. In decades past, writer and society more or

The more time spent with a character, the more opportunity to witness his choices.

the closest circle of antagonism in the world of a character is his own being:

The Inciting Incident of the Central Plot must happen onscreen

A fine work of art—music, dance, painting, story—has the power to silence the chatter in the mind and lift us to another place.

Conventionally, the Inciting Incident occurs very early in the telling and progressions build to a major reversal at the Act One Climax twenty or thirty minutes later.

Write only what you believe.

people share very personal things with total strangers. And I agree. But only in California.

We wear masks to hide our true selves from ourselves.