Today, I made a choice. I made a choice not to get my blog done before midnight. Instead, I was decorating a pirate bar for Christmas because that’s just the sort of interesting life I lead. After coming home, I chose to hop on Ulta.com because Cyber Monday waits for no one. (Click here for my Ebates referral code!) I chose to put off blogging … Continue reading Writing About Writing: Making Choices
Stories need conflict. But then you knew that already, didn’t you? Everyone says that. So what’s my angle here? Stories actually need TWO types of conflict. Or at least, it helps to think of conflict in two different ways. There are microconflicts and macroconflicts. MAYBE you can get away with one but not the other but when you can double team it that’s when real … Continue reading Writing About Writing: The Two Types of Conflict Every Story Needs
I’ve written a lot about character development and story structure shenanigans. However it crossed my mind that I haven’t focused on the building blocks of a script: scenes. If you can’t write scenes, you can’t write a script. Period. Sometimes mapping out the big picture is actually easier than writing scenes. So let’s talk about the characteristics of a good scene. (Scene-eristics? Maybe?) 1. It should take … Continue reading Writing About Writing: What Makes for A Good Scene?
It’s that time of year again when people are more likely to to watch the 2003 film Love, Actually, since many people believe it to be a Christmas film. I am grateful to this film not because I like it but because it is one of those films that taught me an important lesson of writing. It has such a bad case of a certain problem that … Continue reading Writing About Writing: Love Actually Syndrome
I just came back from seeing one of the numerous movies on my “I should probably see that” list. On today’s episode of “Anne ruins a movie everyone else liked by being too analytical,” is Bohemian Rhapsody, which tells the story of Freddie Mercury and his bandmates. I can’t say the movie was BAD or that I regret seeing it, but I also didn’t really love all … Continue reading Writing About Writing: The Struggle Is Real (Also a Bohemian Rhapsody review!)
Yesterday, I had the horrifying pleasure of letting other people give me notes on a script I’m working on. It was not finished, nor was I exceptionally proud of what I had written. However, I had agreed to share some work in my writing group so I did. One of the things that was both helpful and humbling is that I had broken some rules … Continue reading Writing About Writing: Let Other People Read Your Stuff
Yesterday, my recently retired father started asking me about writing. He was considering taking a creative writing class but was worried about his ability to come up with ideas. His question seemed so simple. “How do you come up with your ideas?” And my eyes lit up. I rambled on and on about different scripts I’d written and how those ideas came to me. I … Continue reading Writing About Writing: Ideas Are Overrated
There are the characters that you want to drink a beer with, and there are the characters that you fear could throw a beer across the room at any moment. These are the two types of characters that every work needs: A likable character, and an interesting character. Now of course these two things are not mutually exclusive. However I’ve seen certain people allege that … Continue reading Writing About Writing: Likable vs. Interesting Characters
I’ve just passed the halfway point in this project and it crossed my mind that I have yet to dedicate a post to the rather important topic of “tone.” “Tone” is what makes the 1971 Mel Stuart film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and the 2005 Tim Burton film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory entirely different movies. They have essentially the same characters following along essentially the same … Continue reading Writing About Writing: I Guess I Should Talk About Tone
So I consume a lot of different movies/television of a lot of different genres and over the years I’ve noticed there’s one quality that can make or break a protagonist. I like my protagonists active. Passive protagonists bore the hell out of me. What is the difference, you ask? Passive protagonists are defined almost exclusively by whatever situation they’re thrown into. Active protagonists are defined … Continue reading Writing About Writing: Make Your Protagonist Active
Butcher Thoughts 