Sublime

Think of your story in four sections; then try to reduce each section to one line of action – like a “mini-logline” for each act. The best way to define a Story Engine is to answer the question, “What does the protagonist have to do in this chapter of the story?”

make sure I’ve introduced or hinted at introducing every character in the A story.

The movie producer and all-around mensch Stuart Cornfeld once told me that in a good screenplay, every structural unit needs to do two things: (1) be entertaining in its own right and (2) advance the story in a non-trivial way.

The “house” must be a confined space:

a shot on you, kid.” Of all my “this

Page 25 is the place where I always go to first in a screenplay someone has handed me (we all have our reading quirks) to see “what happens on 25.” I want to know 1) if anything happens and 2) if this screenwriter knows that something should happen. And I mean something big.

“the hunk”