Remember the first scene of The Social Network? Aaron Sorkin’s spitfire banter ricocheting at high velocity between Mark Zuckerberg and his girlfriend Erica. The scene is so brilliantly written, you probably barely noticed that you didn’t understand half of what these characters were saying to each other! With characters talking faster than the ear can [...]

100 Rules and How To Break Them Rule #6: You Need To Make Writing a Full Time Job If you’re a writer, at some point you’ve probably heard yourself say some version of the following sentence: “If I could just get (one day/one week/one month/one year) off from my (day job/kids/spouse/everyday life) to focus full [...]

100 Rules and How To Break Them Rule #5:  Show Don’t Tell That you should “show” instead of “telling” is perhaps the most sound advice any screenwriter can follow. After all, movies are visual, and it’s almost always more interesting to see someone do something right now in the present than to hear them talk [...]

100 Rules and How To Break Them Rule #4 THE INCITING INCIDENT This installment of the 100 Rules series grows directly out of a question from a former student: I have a question and thought I needed a fresh perspective from someone outside UCLA… I’m sort of getting in a fight with the teacher of [...]

100 RULES AND HOW TO BREAK THEM: Rule #3: Be Careful Who You Pitch To It’s a constant fear among young writers: finally coming up with that million dollar idea, only to have it stolen by some mustache twirling producer, some back-stabbing friend, or even worse, some untalented hack of a writer. For this reason, scores [...]

If you’ve read part Part 1 and Part 2 of this article, by now you’re well acquainted with the dangers of flashbacks. But this series is called 100 Rules and How To Break Them for a reason. So get ready to learn how to make flashbacks work for you by looking at three great movies [...]

100 Rules & How To Break Them Flashbacks, Part 2:  Dancing With The Devil As I discussed in Part 1 of the flashbacks series, flashbacks can be extraordinarily powerful storytelling devices.  But they’re also dangerous territory for young writers.  For this reason, many screenwriting gurus insist on rigid rules that scare young writers away from [...]

FLASHBACKS:  100 Rules & How To Break Them As part of this new series, I’ll be exploring one of the so-called “rules of screenwriting” and showing both why they exist, and how to break them in exciting ways that expand and deepen your writing. Rule #2:  ”Don’t Use Flashbacks” As any screenwriting teacher will tell [...]

100 Rules and How To Break Them Introducing my new series “100 Rules and How To Break Them!”  Each post, I’ll be analyzing one of the so called “rules” of screenwriting, and exploring both why they exist, and how to break them in interesting ways that make your writing better and your stories more powerful. RULE [...]