{"id":16787,"date":"2018-06-11T21:50:06","date_gmt":"2018-06-11T21:50:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/filmconnection.com\/blog\/?p=6852"},"modified":"2018-06-11T21:50:06","modified_gmt":"2018-06-11T21:50:06","slug":"screenwriting-tips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/filmconnection.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/11\/screenwriting-tips\/","title":{"rendered":"Top Screenwriting Tips from Our Mentors"},"content":{"rendered":"

ON HOW TO DEVELOP TENSION IN A SCREENPLAY<\/strong>
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\nLos Angeles-based Film Connection screenwriting mentor Eric Abrams<\/strong> (Married\u2026with Children, Liv & Maddie) has the following tip:
\n\u201cYou always want to make it as difficult as possible for characters, or else why are we watching this? Challenges met and mastered. You want to make it an obstacle course for them. The second act is when things are looking most grim\u2026[Your characters] should always want different things. That\u2019s how you get conflict\u2026She wants him to get a better job, and he wants to get out of there as soon as possible. Those are two different wants, and yet they\u2019re forced together and it\u2019s going to be awkward. If they get along great, you probably don\u2019t have a very interesting scene. We want that in real life, but not when we\u2019re paying, what is it, $12 to see a movie these days.\u201d
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\nON KNOWING YOUR SCREENPLAY\u2019S CHARACTERS<\/strong>
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\nFilm Connection screenwriting mentor Aaron Feldman<\/strong> (PewDiePie, Poop Talk<\/em>) is a big believer in getting in deep and knowing your characters through and through, then learning what it takes to bring that to the page.
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\n\u201cMake a three-dimensional character that you know you can talk to because, essentially, you have conversations with these characters [as you write]. And if you know your character, you\u2019ll understand how they\u2019re going to react. So whatever situation you have, you\u2019re basically creating a sandbox, and you can create the scenario that brings them up, brings them down, or that inevitably leads to success or failure\u2026The great thing about screenwriting is that you get to be all these different characters, the good guys, the bad guys. Visualize everything. It\u2019s a daunting task, but then it comes together and it all has to do with great characters\u2026Again, it\u2019s character, character, character.\u201d
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\nON CONFLICT AS AN ESSENTIAL COMPONENT OF CHARACTER<\/strong>
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\nFilm Connection screenwriting mentor Ron Peterson<\/strong> (Crossroads Entertainment), stresses the relationship between the character and the conflict he or she must go up against.
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\n“There is a direct relationship between character and conflict. As a simple example, what if I start with the movie of Rocky with a fighter, because we\u2019ll agree that that conflict of Rocky is great, right? But\u2026I can ruin that conflict in two seconds. What if I start the movie where Rocky is not an out-of-shape fighter, but Rocky is a fighter that can do 50,000 pushups, takes Vitamin B12, is in great shape, is like this wonderful person, and now that fighter gets to fight for the championship of the world? If that\u2019s how I put his character, do you think there\u2019s a conflict now? I just destroyed the conflict. So your choice of your character has as much as to do with the establishment of the conflict as the conflict itself.”
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\nWant to prevent the all-too-common “Act 2 lag”? Get Ron’s tips on Story Transformation<\/a> , all made easy to understand with examples from movies nearly everyone knows and loves.
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\nON HOW TO REVEAL THE THEME IN YOUR MOVIE<\/strong>
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\nSeven-time Emmy nominee and Film Connection screenwriting mentor Ron Osborn<\/strong> has sage advice on the often daunting subject of theme in screenplay.
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\n\u201cNo one should set out to write a theme. No one sets out to write \u201cwar is hell\u201d as a theme. No, you sit down to write a story, and as you\u2019re working it out, you realize what you\u2019re really saying is war is hell. And once you know that, that becomes your compass. Now there\u2019s the danger of playing the theme versus playing the plot, and you don\u2019t want to do that. You want to play the plot and let the theme come out of it. By way of example, going back to \u201cwar is hell,\u201d if you have a scene with two soldiers in a foxhole in WWII and they\u2019re talking about what hell they\u2019re going through, that\u2019s playing the theme. But if they\u2019re in a foxhole and it\u2019s winter, and if they don\u2019t start a fire they\u2019re going to freeze to death, but if they start that fire they\u2019re going to alert the enemy snipers to their location and probably get shot, that\u2019s hell. You don\u2019t have to tell me: as the audience, I get it. So you don\u2019t want the theme to dominate; you want the theme to play underneath and guide you, but you want to play the plot and let me, as the audience, get to the theme.\u201d Ron Osborn on Comedy, Drama, and Theme<\/a>.
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\nON LETTING YOUR STORY GROW<\/strong>
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\nFilm Connection mentor Ana Benda\u00f1a<\/strong> believes in letting your creative mind get engaged in the writing process and easing up on the structural reigns, at first.
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\n“You have to let the story grow. It\u2019s almost like having a child. You have an idea and a vision of what it\u2019s going to be like, and then you actually start nurturing the story and starting the story and building the story, and the next thing you know, it\u2019s morphed into something completely different. It\u2019s developed into something better, it\u2019s progressed into something better, and I believe that writers should definitely allow room for that, unless you know 110% what exactly it is that you want.”
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\n… AND THEN TRIMMING THE FAT<\/strong>
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\nThen, when it’s time, cut what’s unnecessary. All your hard work has helped you grow real characters and a story that rings true, so do away with the ancillary stuff. What was once scaffolding is unnecessary.
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\n\u201cTrim the fat. If it\u2019s not essential to what is happening in front of these characters, I would probably omit it. We only have a very small window into these characters\u2019 lives\u2026You\u2019re showing your characters in situations that are very, very important for their development as a character. So you want to cut all the boring stuff. If it\u2019s not essential to your story and it\u2019s not essential to the scene and what\u2019s happening in front of you, don\u2019t include it.\u201d
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\n[break side=”left”]<\/p>\n

Meeting Jason Mewes of Slackers on-set & Getting Real About the Film Industry<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ON HOW TO DEVELOP TENSION IN A SCREENPLAY Los Angeles-based Film Connection screenwriting mentor Eric Abrams (Married\u2026with Children, Liv & Maddie) has the following tip: \u201cYou always want to make it as difficult as possible for characters, or else why are we watching this? Challenges met and mastered. You want to make it an obstacle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":14387,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[173,175,165,314],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-learning-101","category-research-201","category-rrfc-mentors"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/filmconnection.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/filmconnection.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/filmconnection.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmconnection.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmconnection.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/filmconnection.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmconnection.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/filmconnection.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmconnection.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmconnection.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}