Hello, screenwriters.  This is a different sort of post which I hope you will appreciate.  As you know I do everything possible to send out information which you won’t normally hear in your normal screenwriting class, screenwriting workshop, or screenwriting course.  This doesn’t really fit that bill but it is important nevertheless.

These posts all come from my Facebook screenwriting group:  The Secrets of Screenwriting Group.  We have now over 10,000 members to our group.  As far as I can see discover, this is a far greater and more powerful group (because of all the great information we share) than any other screenwriting group on Facebook or any where else on the internet as far as I know.  We all have each other to congratulate on this milestone.

I must get at least 20 new members a day who ask to be admitted to our ranks.  Sometimes I’ll get more than 30, so you can see we’re growing by leaps and bounds.  Many of the new members immediately begin sharing information that we can all profit by.  Or they ask questions that many of you take the time to answer.  And if knowledge is power, then we certainly have a very vibrant and special community here that in the end makes us all better and more knowledgeable screenwriters.

I’d especially like to thank those who take the time to post important information on our site – like Bruce Gordon and Rod Wilson – but there are many others of you who do the same and please forgive me if I don’t mention all your names.

There are posts that have given me data that I didn’t know – like the copyright attorney who made a convincing case why we should all copyright our material rather than register it at the Writers Guild.  And I am a strong and supportive member of the Guild but copyrighting is definitely the way to go.  Where else would you find out such stuff?

I know some of you get a bit annoyed by the spam we sometimes receive but believe me I comb this site numerous times a day and delete those posts as fast as I can and oftentimes block those members from that point on from being a part of the group.  Sometimes I let a post stand even if it isn’t strictly about screenwriting just because it’s interesting.

I’ve been delighted that a good number of you have taken me up on my offer to join one of my professional screenwriting workshops or asked me to do a private consultation with me if you don’t live in L.A.  As you can see, I also offer webinars for those who don’t live in Hollywood and there is really no other way to get the depth of knowledge that those who live here locally can receive easily and inexpensively.

I want to share my many years of experience clawing out a living in this very tough business and in the process saving you months and even years of your time getting the best guidance you can possibly receive.  I’ve had six films produced from my groups and I know no other screenwriting instructor in Los Angeles has that kind of track record.

Let’s all keep up this good work.  Let us know when you hear about a screenwriting contest or any relevant articles or information that would benefit us all.  Feel free to ask questions and I’m sure we will all do our best to answer them.  Let’s do our best to keep it all positive and be supportive of one another because that’s the gone I want to set.  The more you give, the more you will receive.  And thanks again for making this group the very best on the internet!

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WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO GET YOUR SCREENPLAY READY TO MARKET?

Hello, screenwriters.  This is our topic for today.  And as you know I’m always trying to provide information that you don’t normally receive in your typical screenwriting course, screenwriting class and screenwriting workshop.  I can’t think of a topic that is more apropos to that mission statement than this.  When do you know you’re ready to send out your screenplay for sale?

This is a vexing and difficult question.  I know one of my biggest problems as a screenwriting is my impatience.  I get excited about a new draft and immediately want to send it out.  Fortunately, I’ve had agents and producers and managers who had the foresight to caution me that the script wasn’t ready yet and still needed work.  So I went back to the drawing board and made it even better.

But what if you’re not at that point in your career to have managers and agents and other screenwriting professionals to provide that guidance?  When do you know you should go balls out and get your screenplay into the hands of every possible contact you can drum up?  Because if you do this prematurely, you will burn every contact you might have or create.

For one thing, know this.  For some reason everyone goes to a good movie and thinks: I can do that.  They think that because really good movies look so simple it’s not that difficult, but they couldn’t be more wrong. It’s that very simplicity that we eventually realize is so hard to achieve.

It’s easy to be complicated.  To be simple in telling a story and yet still have depth of emotion and great character development is what’s so hard to do.

If you were learning to play the piano, you wouldn’t think you could just sit down and play Mozart.  That would be crazy.  You’d play chopsticks for a good while and then gradually move on to more difficult exercises and then after years of practice you might tackle the great composers.

And yet so many beginning screenwriters somehow get the idea that they can just sit down and knock out a great screenplay.  And when that doesn’t happen, they either get blocked or disgusted and give up screenwriting.

This is a difficult craft.  It takes years of work to really get good at it.  Most of the time you need to write 2 or 3 screenplays before you even get close to hitting on something that will be marketable and at the same time be professionally written as well.

How do you achieve this mastery?  The same way great athletes and musicians do.  They work under those who have achieved success in their own careers.  Roger Federer for example in tennis is coached by Stefan Edberg, one of the great tennis players of the last 20 years.  Roger Federer is believed by many to be the greatest tennis player of all time and yet he still works with a coach who keeps pushing him to be better and better.

Screenwriters need to work with those who can mentor them.  That’s why I teach professional level screenwriting workshops in Los Angeles and provide private consultations with writers all over the world.  We all need outside guidance to help us see the problems we’re having in a script or the weak spots in our technique and craft.

If it’s not working with someone like me, everyone needs to find that professional who knows how to give great notes to writers, and that takes talent.  Many people can point out the weaknesses in a script, but it is the rare person who can help find the right creative solution to solve that problem.  And there is always a solution if you know what you’re doing.

Don’t work with playwrights or someone right out of film school or so-called pundits who never had a screenplay of their own produced.  Find the Stefan Edbergs of the world.  Make sure your screenplay has gone through multiple drafts and it’s been analyzed and polished and vetted again and again until you are convinced (and your mentor(s) are convinced) it’s as good as it can possibly be.

Otherwise you’re ruining whatever chance you might have had.  Once someone reads a script and rejects it, they’ll never give it a second chance.  So a script has to go out when it’s ready to go out.

I know it’s not easy but when you do this correctly and you see your screenplay improving markedly after each draft, you will find the strength and purpose to make it truly great.  Don’t accept anything less.

We’ll continue this discussion and others on the business side of screenwriting in the future.

Until then – KEEP WRITING!

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Hello, everyone. My mission statement is to provide information you won’t normally hear in your typical screenwriting course, screenwriting class or screenwriting workshop.  This following subject certainly fits that bill.  We spoke last week about generating great movie concepts by taking a compelling idea in one genre and using that same concept for a different genre. This can yield great results. I spoke about “Strangers On A Train,” and “Throw Momma From The Train.”

Since we’re onto this topic for now, let’s riff on it for awhile longer. I also want to generate other ways to find great concepts – taking a wonderful idea in one time period and using it in a slightly different way for another period of time.

Shakespeare’s plots like “Romeo & Juliet,” have been borrowed constantly by writers, just as Shakespeare borrowed them himself.

How about “She’s The Man,” a delightful comedy staring Amanda Bynes. She disguises herself as her brother so she can play soccer on the boys’ team when her girls’ soccer group is disbanded.

The writers of the film, Ewan Leslie and Karen Lutz, even use Shakespeare’s character names from his comedy, Twelfth Night,” as it basically steals the exact same plot. Amanda is Viola, the name of the protagonist in Shakespeare’s play.

But what makes it fresh, is that it’s set in a completely different world with high school kids. I’m sure Shakespeare wouldn’t have minded a bit.

A great concept is a great concept. And by the way, concepts are not something you can lay claim to. The only things that are protectible under the copyright law are specific plots and characters.

So the Romeo and Juliet concept (that a young man falls in love with the enemy of his family or group) is not something you can lay claim to. Anyone can use that concept. But it’s how you use it — is what you can protect through registration with The Copyright Office.  (And for those who read that excellent post a few weeks ago by a copyright attorney, you definitely should copyright your material, not register it with The Writers Guild).

Great concepts are something we as professional screenwriters value greatly. It gives us an added advantage when we pitch our ideas or try to market them, because the film company or studio can then easily see how to market them.

Again, don’t misinterpret this and think I’m saying that precludes other kinds of stories that do amazingly well at the box office, “Juno,” Crash,” even “Knocked Up,” which isn’t really a high concept idea but was incredibly successful.

40 Year Old Virgin on the other hand was extremely high concept and also performed artistically and commercially.

We’ll take one more example before we sign off for today. A movie came out a few years ago which I had the good fortune to see: “Body of Lies,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe. Great Writing, great acting, great directing. But what is the concept of this movie?

A C.I.A. operative, played by Leonardo, is manipulated by everyone including his handler (Russell Crowe). Everyone in this movie has to deal with deception and manipulation and moral ambiguity in the war on terror. The concept is “soft,” or “weak,” hardly unique and despite the direction and excellent writing did not inspire great gobs of people to go see it.

What will inspire people? The cast of course and this is what the studio was banking on. Unfortunately a great cast doesn’t always do the job, especially when the premise of a film sounds derivative or vague.

We will return to more talk about creating great characters when we resume next week.

Until then – KEEP WRITING!

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Hello, screenwriters.  As you’re well aware, I attempt to provide insights into screenwriting that one wouldn’t normally hear in your typical screenwriting course, screenwriting class or screenwriting workshop.  This certainly fits that bill.

Last week I wrote about high concept premises and why producers are so eager to find those kind of ideas in the screenplays they receive.

And that does not mean that many, many films don’t get made even though they do have “soft” concepts. “Juno” was clearly not high concept and neither was “Crash.” So please don’t let this deter you from writing those movies. I am simply trying here to give you techniques to find high concept ideas if you’d like to go that route.

And one very successful technique is taking a high concept idea from one genre and turning it into a high concept idea in a totally different genre. Like “The Sixth Sense” being morphed into “Ghost Town.”

Here’s another example: “Strangers On A Train,” a very successful Hitchcock film from a novel by Patricia Highsmith, adaptation by Whitfield Cool – other writers who contributed to this script – Ben Hecht and Raymond Chandler. Pretty nice team, wouldn’t you say?

Here’s the fantastic concept – two strangers meet on a train who both want people in their lives to be killed. They know they will be suspected of their deaths – but realize there’s very little chance perfect strangers will be caught by the police because they have absolutely no motive. So they decide they’ll kill the other man’s wife or business partner, or whatever. It’s a great and suspenseful thriller with all kinds of great twists along the way.

What movie does this remind you of in a completely different genre? “Throw Momma From The Train,” of course. It takes a thriller and turns it into a comedy. As T.S. Elliot said (and I know I’ve quoted this many times before) mediocre writers borrow, great writers steal. This is stealing of the highest order and completely legitimate and creative if done with true wit and style.

Here’s something similar and much more recent – Blue Jasmine by Woody Allen.  It’s exactly the premise and structure of Tennessee Williams’ famous play:  “A Streetcar Named Desire.”

It’s modernized, inspired I’m sure by the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, where the wife of a unscrupulous wall street billionaire suddenly finds herself penniless.  So the screenwriter uses the exact structure and storyline of a famous play to hit the correct beats in making this a great movie.

If anyone can think of more examples, please pass them along.

So let’s all think of those high concept ideas: I know I would give just about anything for one, excluding my own child of course – but even that would be quite tempting.

Until next week – LET’S KEEP WRITING!

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Hello, everyone.  As you all know, I like to present material that you don’t normally hear in your typical screenwriting class, screenwriting course, or screenwriting workshop.  I can’t think of a better example than what I’m about to speak about today.

We have been talking lately of creating great characters and this led me to talk about “The Dallas Buyers Club” and “12 years A Slave.”  I began to explore the idea of coming up with great concepts for movies – how does a writer find a great idea in the first place?

This is a new subject I have not spoken about at any length, but now it appears we have an opportunity to touch on this subject. I will talk about one brainstorming technique to come up with high concept premises and then we shall return to character development in the very near future.

Let’s take a look at a movie that came out a few years ago, “Ghost Town.” A misanthropic dentist dies for 6 minutes while having a colonoscopy and now can see ghosts wandering all around Manhattan. They annoy him to no end as they all want him to do favors for them.

One dead person played by Greg Kinnear tells the dentist that if he’ll get rid of his wife’s fiance, he’ll make sure the ghosts go away. The misanthropic dentist feels he has no choice but to do the dead man’s bidding.

This is a comedy but it sure sounds similiar in some ways to a very chilling thriller/horror film doesn’t it? — The Sixth Sense? Here another major character could see dead people but the effect the writer (M. Night Shyamalan) wanted to impose on his audience was anything but comedic.

So here is a brainstorming technique.  You take a great movie that was a horror film or a thriller for example, use the same concept but turn it into a comedy.

And what exactly do I mean by high concept? When you go to pitch to movie companies or anyplace where companies are seeking new projects like Inktip.com, they almost all say they want high concept movies.

This simply means that you can express the story in a few sentences and these lines will be so compelling that we are instantly “hooked” by the idea itself. In other words, the idea in itself is so easily told and tantalizing that it immediately grabs our attention.

Would “12 Years A Slave” or “The Dallas Buyers Club” be in this category?  To some degree, I think they would.

Why is that so important to movie companies or studios? It’s obvious – because the movie will then be easy to market. If the film has a weak or “soft” concept, like the “Road To Rodanthe,” a film that came out with Richard Gere and Diane Lane some years ago, nobody has a clue what it’s about. And as a result, it’s harder to sell to the public.

We probably know it’s a love story but that’s all we really get. A movie like this is much harder to promote – people will go see it because they love Richard Gere or Diane Lane – or because they go see every love story that comes out – but they’re not rushing out to see it because the story sounds interesting. In fact, we don’t know anything about the story at all.

And marketing is what movie making has become more and more about. This is a sad fact but nevertheless true. Before a movie gets green lighted or even bought, the creative people at the studio always pass it by the marketing people to see if they can promote this idea domestically and in the international marketplace.

So clearly, the more high concept our films are, the better chance they have of getting sold and produced.

I personally never got a film made that wasn’t “high concept” to some degree. And believe me I tried. Some scripts I wrote I just felt so deeply about, I just had to write them. And there’s no better reason than that to write a screenplay.

We’ll talk more about high concept and why it’s so important to the buyers and studios out there.

Until then – KEEP WRITING!

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Hello, screenwriters. As you are all aware, I do my best to provide information not normally covered in your typical screenwriting course, screenwriting class or screenwriting workshop.  This certainly applies to that desire of mine.

As all of you are film buffs, I hope you enjoyed the Oscars.  Did you think “Her” was the best original screenplay?  How about “12 Years A Slave” for best adapted screenplay.  I certainly would have picked “Her” – not so sure about “12 Years.”

Let’s talk about 12 Years for a little bit.  I’d like to point out one glaring problem with this screenplay.

In classic story structure you spend Act 1 setting up your protagonist.  We see the character in his or her normal life, the problems besetting this individual, who are his or her main friends, their job, their social milieu.

We need to firmly establish who they are before we have a plot point that forces them to face the very things they adamantly refuse to face in real life.

In 12 Years A Slave we get none of this.  All we see is that Solomon Northrup (played brilliantly by Chiwetel Ejiorfor) has a wife and two children and lives well in New York.  We don’t know anything else about him really, other than he plays music.

As a result, when he gets kidnapped we aren’t as fully engaged with the enormity of this crime.  Yes, we do feel bad for him that a free man is thrust into slavery, but if we knew him better it wouldn’t just be general horror at this injustice but one that was much more personal.  We would empathize with him even more.

We learn about Solomon as he suffers through one cruelty after the next.  He survives and somehow keeps his integrity and dignity.  He does become a hero.  If you read some of my posts about the Hero’s Journey, generally the hero suffers terrible injustices and danger not just for personal safety but to inevitably bring back the sword (or the Arc of the Covenant or the elixir) for his friends and family, he suffers and prevails for the society at large in some way – just like Ron Woodruff did in The Dallas Buyers Club.

These rules we have are guiding principles.  We can’t be a slave to them – they are there to be broken, it’s true.  But they are also there because there are similar patterns in all great stories.  In other words, they tend to work.  When you break these rules, you need a damned good reason why you’re doing so.

For me, in “12 Years A Slave,” there was no good reason to make the protagonist such a generalized person and not someone more specific who can identify with and understand.

We’ll talk more about these guiding principles as the weeks progress.

Until then – KEEP WRITING!

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Hello, everyone.  As you know, I attempt in these posts to provide information you wouldn’t normally hear in your typical screenwriting class, screenwriting course or screenwriting workshop.  I have the luxury of going deeper into areas of what makes a great screenplay, and I also have many years of experience as a professional screenwriter myself.

I really enjoy doing this because it forces me to truly understand what makes a compelling piece of writing.  People say you teach what you need to learn yourself and in this case it’s very true.

I am always learning and trying to go deeper in my own writing.  Sometimes I’m lucky enough to hit on something that resonates deeply within me as a person and these turn out to be my best works.  It doesn’t always happen but when it does, it makes all the struggle and hard work worth the effort.

We’ve been talking about structure and how to build you story.  I’ve talked about Blake Snyder (Saving The Cat) which is what a lot of film executives and producers seem to be using now to understand the foundation of a story.  I think this has occurred because a lot of these people are not artists themselves and are somehow floundering about, trying to find a formula they can latch onto.

Blake Snyder provides such a formula but unfortunately it’s just that.  It’s not organic and doesn’t truly go to the heart of what makes great screenwriting.  Blake Synder, who is unfortunately no longer with us, was very good as a salesman and made a lot of money selling his projects; but his screenplays turned out to be very formulaic and forgettable, just like his theories of structure.

Structure is truly about great characters and is more about why we care about a movie than it is about anything else.  As Charles Darwin so brilliantly discovered — a species survives not because it’s more intelligent or stronger, it survives because of its ability to adapt.

Change is what great screenplays are about.  Are your protagonists able to change?  If they are, they will survive.  They will grow when faced with obstacles.  All the great screenplays are about characters changing in the face of adversity – Midnight Cowboy, Coming Home, Tootsie, Casablanca and the two movies we recently analyzed:  The Dallas Buyers Club and Lethal Weapon.

Are there formulas to help you show how characters grow and change?  Not really.  You have to understand people, you have to dig deeply within yourself and comprehend how you’ve changed in the past, the little steps that build to bigger steps, the slips you made, the incredible fortitude and times of despair and almost giving up.  It takes an understanding of humanity and yourself.

The closest anyone came to charting this part is Lajos Egri in his great book:  The Art of Dramatic Writing.

I will provide a little bit of what he said about how a character grows in my next post.  I think you’ll enjoy it.

Until then – KEEP WRITING!

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Hello, everyone.  As I like to say, I provide t his blog to give screenwriters knowledge they won’t normally receive in the typical screenwriting course, screenwriting class or screenwriting workshop.  This hopefully fulfills that promise.

I just gave a webinar through the Writers Store about the subject of story structure.  Let me pass on some of the things I spoke about.

The plot of a story is not the same thing as its structure.  Let’s take Lethal Weapon, screenplay by Shane Black – starring Mel Gibson and Danny Glover. I like to use this example because this action film transcended the typical movie of this genre.  It will last because it has something most action movies don’t have – true heart and emotion.

The PLOT is that Mel Gibson, a burnt out cop on the edge of suicide, discovers a plot to smuggle in heroin from Southeast Asia by ex CIA types, who did this during the Vietnam War and are still doing it.

With the help of his new partner Danny Glover, another cop who’s about to retire, they defeat the bad guys, and Mel Gibson redeems himself in the process.

Plots aren’t really unique or memorable but great characters are.  What is Lethal Weapon really about?  That is truly the STRUCTURE.

It’s about Mel Gibson – who wants to kill himself at the beginning of the story because of the death of his wife.  When he hooks up with Danny Glover (who’s a family man with a great wife and kids) he begins to bond with another human being and connects with Danny Glover’s family.

By the end of the movie he’s turned his life around and finds a reason to live again.  So the last image is Mel Gibson going into his new partner’s house to celebrate Christmas.

That is the real structure of the movie, it’s not the plot.  The plot is only there is service the characters and the character arc.  It’s why we care about the film and it rises above the typical genre of this kind of film.  It becomes memorable.

Structure is an organic thing – it’s not a formula or something that can be quantified by on this page # this happens or on this page # that happens.  It’s not always clear at the beginning what your structure really is – because it develops as you’re writing and you begin to realize my movie is really about this one emotional thing.  It’s always about the characters and how they grow and why we care and it’s almost always exemplified by a particular relationship – like that of Ron and Rayon in The Dallas Buyers Club.

Look beyond the plot to why an audience will care, truly care about your story.  Once you’ve got that, you’ve got the structure.  Then milk that one emotional element for all you’ve got.  Once you’ve done that, you’ve created a unique structure that will make the difference between mediocrity and true greatness.

We’ll talk more about structure in the weeks to come.

Until then – KEEP WRITING!

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Hello, everyone.  As you all know, I do this blog to provide information on aspects of screenwriting you wouldn’t normally hear in your typical screenwriting course, screenwriting class or screenwriting workshop.  This post is exactly on that order.

So, let’s get started.  Now that we’re discussing structure, let’s apply those lessons to my favorite film of the year: The Dallas Buyers Club, written by Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack, starring Matthew McConaughey, who plays Ron Woodruff, the protagonist.

This is a perfect screenplay to analyze because it exemplifies how the structure of a film is not the plot.

Let’s first look at the plot.  The main character discovers he has HIV through promiscuous heterosexual sex.  He’s not gay, he’s just incredibly irresponsible, unethical and a wild drug user.  He’s also homophobic.  A great anti-hero because although he has a certain charisma, he’s clearly not your  typical hero.

Once he hears the diagnosis, Ron tries to bribe anyone he can to getting him the drugs that will help him live.  That doesn’t work out so he goes on a mission to get them outside of the country.  Some of these drugs are not sanctioned by the FDA (who is the villain in this piece), so he has to smuggle them into the country.

In the process he sets up The Dallas Buyers Club to help fund his quest and help other HIV infected men and women get the same drugs to prolong their lives.  Ultimately, he brings awareness to the plight of HIV sufferers and ultimately proves that these unapproved drugs do actually work in fighting the disease.  So our anti hero inevitably becomes a real hero.

All well and good.  It’s a decent plot but is that why we care about this film?  No.  Why we care is because of the relationship between Ron and Rayon, a transvestite he first meets when he gets hospitalized, a part played brilliantly by Jared Leto.

This is the central relationship in the film.  Our hero goes from detesting Rayon, to enlisting his help in getting drugs, to realizing that only Rayon can get him his clients in the Buyers Club because Ron is not gay and the gay community doesn’t trust him.

So Ron and Rayon become partners and finally good friends.  It’s Rayon that bails out Ron when he’s broke and the Buyers Club is about to go under by asking his father for money, something that’s humiliating to Rayon but he does it for his friend and the buyers club.

This is what makes us care about this movie.  It’s very human and very touching.  The character arc of our protagonist goes from homophobia (or hatred) to kindship and caring (or love).  This is what the structure of this film is about, not the plot.

A plot is a plot is a plot.  They’re basically formulaic constructs that force the character to change.  But it’s the actual character arc that is really what the film is about and constitutes the true structure of the story.

To really understand the structure of your story you have to ask yourself what the screenplay is about.  Why will people care about your film.  And they’ll care because of the character arc of your protagonist, usually shown by one central relationship in the story.

Every great movie is about the protagonist going from one emotion (trust, for example) to an opposite one (betrayal).  If you get that, you’ll have a great structure.  Think of all the great films, Tootsie, Coming Home, Midnight Cowboy, Fatal Attraction, Lethal Weapon.  In each the protagonist goes from one emotion to an opposite one and that is what determines the structure.

Structure is about characters changing.  It’s about relationships and how they define who we are.  We’ll use another example next week to illustrate this same point in another context.

Until then – KEEP WRITING!

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Hello, screenwriters. As you all know, I do my best to provide information that you wouldn’t normally receive in your typical screenwriting workshop, screenwriting course or screenwriting class.  This is a great example of that.

We have been talking for the last number of weeks about story and I have alluded to past attempts to make structure understandable and easy to understand.

The most popular book of late on this topic has been Blake Snyder’s “Save The Cat.”  Unfortunately, Mr. Snyder has passed away and I hesitate to present anything but positive information about his well thought out treatise on story structure, for he like others, has contributed important points that can help us tremendously.

I will mention one here:  Begin with a striking visual image in your screenplay that will set the tone for your story and immediately pull us into the script.  He uses the first action sequence in “Lawrence of Arabia” to make his point.  Lawrence is driving like a madman on an English country road on his motorcycle and then takes a huge spill.  This is how he ultimately died.  It gives us a visual metaphor for Lawrence’s life – his recklessness and abandon.  He was at heart a thrill seeker with very little regard for his own safety.

We can learn a lot by observations like this just as we can learn from other writers about structure like Chris Vogler, who took Joseph Campbell’s work – The Heroes Journey – and applied it to screenwriting.  Joseph Campbell was instrumental for filmmakers like George Lucas who basically took Joseph Campbell’s paradigm and structured Star Wars on its point-by-point lay-out of who fables are told.

Joseph Campbell understood story telling in a unique way.  He went back to all the great fairy tales and legends in religious works and non-religious works and found that there were many parallels among them.  Chris Vogler was insightful in applying this to screenplays.

A great example would be Vogler pointing out the re-occurrence of the reluctant hero.  I can’t stress enough what a great insight this is.

In Campbell’s work Vogler learned that the hero rarely wants to go on the quest or journey.  He or she is reluctant.  The hero is forced to do it, through internal pressures or exterior ones.

And doesn’t that make sense emotionally.  Who wants to go off and risk their life fighting the Death Star?  Nobody.  We’d much prefer to stay safe and warm in our comfortable homes and let someone else face the danger.  We see this occur in all the great heroic stories — whether they’re “Lord Of The Rings” or the “Mahabatra.”

We can use this in our screenplays.  Don’t make it easy for your hero to go on his own mission.  Force him or her into it.  It will create more conflict and be more real.

In my upcoming webinar I will point out many other contributions that we can all use from Blake Snyder to Syd Fields to Chris Vogler.  I will then make my own contribution that will clear up any confusions you might have about structure and how to create a story that will be as emotional and dramatic as possible.

Join me this coming Wednesday on February 5^th at 1:00 p.m. for my presentation.  The webinar will be archived for a year so you can tune in at any time.  Click on the following link and find out the details: http://bit.ly/EasyStructure

Until then – KEEP WRITING!

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