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

Our FEAR for the character should be the absolute worst-case scenario:

In a love story or romantic comedy, the Training Sequence or Tools Sequence is often a Shopping Sequence or a Workout Sequence or a Makeover Sequence, or a combination of all of the above. The heroine, with the help of a mentor or ally, undergoes a transformation through acquiring the most important of tools: the right clothes and shoes and hairsty

ASSIGNMENT: Start being on the lookout for great climaxes (or curtains or cliffhangers) – theatrical, filmic, and novelistic. In a film, you will be looking at your timer or clock at about 30 minutes, 60 minutes, and 90 minutes to find the act breaks and Midpoint climax, then the final climax at about 110 minutes; in a 400-page novel the climaxes w

Often a TICKING CLOCK is introduced at the Midpoint, as we will discuss further in the chapter on Creating Suspense (Chapter 31). A clock is a great way to speed up the action and increase the urgency of your story.

YOUR SETUPS AND PLANTS. Very often you will have set up a weakness for your hero/ine. That weakness that has caused him or her to fail repeatedly in previous tests, and in the battle the hero/ine’s great weakness will be tested. PLACE is a hugely important element of a climax. Great stories usually, if not almost always, end in a location that has

You need to create your list, and break those stories down to see why they have such an impact on you — because that's the kind of impact that you want to have on your readers.

ASSIGNMENT: Brainstorm a list of examples of multiple forces of antagonism and non-human antagonists.

Another inevitable element of the training sequence, and common to Act II:1 in general, is PLANTS AND PAYOFFS. For example, we learn that the hero/ine (and/or other members of the team) has a certain weakness in battle. That weakness will naturally have to be tested in the final battle. Yoda continually gets angry with Luke for not trusting the For

In all of the above scenes, the Lover’s Stand forces the Loved One to step up and commit just as deeply as the Lover is committed. But it seems that very, very, very often, it’s one character, the Lover, who has to force the issue.