Yesterday we began our discussion on screenwriting and touched on the three-act and four-act structures. So what about this four-act thing? How did this come about? What is the deal? Google Images: Star Wars The truth is, it’s not much different than the three-act structure. The issue was that people were having problems with the second act. In fact, most writers tend to struggle with the middle of the story. Usually people have a better idea of how things start and how they end. Connecting the two seems to be troublesome. Things have a tendency to lag or get blown off-course. Enough people had problems with the middle of their stories that something had to be done about it. The three-act structure just wasn’t cutting it. One keen individual, Syd Field, came up with something called the Midpoint, the point directly in the middle of the screenplay. This effectively divided the troublesome second act into two more manageable parts. Thus, the second act simply gets broken up i...

It’s hard to resist the allure of Hollywood. It’s just sexy, you know? All the stars and fanciness, the flashy lights. The whole process of making a movie is certainly more fascinating than the process of making a novel. Kids don’t run away from home to clamor at the doors of elite New York City literary agencies, trying to land whatever job they can. Movies are just a bit more glamorous than books are, and there’s no shame in hoping to see a story of yours translated to the big screen. If you’ve ever caught yourself saying, “This could be a movie,” you are not alone. Imagining which stars will get to bring your characters to life is part of the fun. For many writers, though, the world of film is a mystery. Maybe you’re curious about how the industry works, what makes screenwriting different from writing a novel, what tricks you can learn from the Hollywood masters to help improve your own craft. That’s what I’ll be helping you with in this series. The film industry has a lot to...

Welcome to March, dear readers, and another month of writing adventures. We'll be exploring script writing a bit (who doesn't want their novel to become a movie?) and examining the differences between book and movie plots, which tend to have dissimilar story arcs. It's perhaps important to first understand the monomyth or hero's journey concept upon which so many modern movies are based. Joseph Campbell held that numerous myths from different times and places share fundamental structures and stages, which he summarized in The Hero with a Thousand Faces.  You can read more about it at Wikipedia which has a comprehensive essay on Campbell's work. There are also many YouTube videos including this TEDx production:   On Thursday, author, artist, and actor, Daniel Donche will share his expertise on how the hero's journey is important to screen writing, and can even improve the plotting in your novel if consciously applied to characters and plots at k...