Writing Love: Screenwriting Tricks for Authors II: Story Structure for Pantsers and Plotters (Screenwriting Tricks For Authors (and Screenwriters!) Book 2)

ASSIGNMENT: Make a list of ten high concept premises (that I haven’t already discussed here!). Try to define what about them makes them high concept for you. ASSIGNMENT: Make a commitment to come up with at least three premises a week. Try them out on your friends and family. Which ones make their eyes light up? Why aren’t you writing those stories

(Lesson: infuse every character, every moment, with all the life you can cram into it.)

ASSIGNMENT: Make a list of ten books (books this time, not films) with first chapters that you love. Now read the first few pages of each, or the whole chapter, and figure out what it is that makes you love those openings so much. Is it the emotion, the characterization, the imagery, the dialogue, the sense of an unseen narrator? What are you drawn

Here’s another way of looking at it: the potential of the setup is obvious.

If you can tell your story in one line and everyone who hears it can see exactly what the movie or book is — and a majority of people who hear it will be interested in seeing it or reading it — that’s high concept.

• They are about a situation that we all (or almost all) have experienced (Meet the Parents, Blind Date, Four Christmases, The Hangover).

The devil is walking around the halls of a Boston hospital making deals with the patients and their families. And there’s a “What would you do?” built in: “What would you give to save the life of a loved one?”

ASSIGNMENT: Write out your reasons WHY THEM? for the lovers in your WIP.

So while you’re struggling to pull together everything you’re trying to make happen in an ending, remember to step back and identify what you want your reader or audience to FEEL. Another important component in an ending is a sense of inevitability: that it was always going to come down to this.