The Cassandra trope
Chances are, that even if you don’t know the whole Greek story, you will have heard of Cassandra. A princess who was cursed by a God, she is doomed to foresee the truth but never to be believed. She foretold the fall of her home – the city of Troy. She even foretold her capture [...]
Workshop: Screenwriting Beyond the Basics
Introducing my first workshop in Bristol! Screenwriting Beyond the Basics Goldbrick House, 69 Park Street, Bristol Saturday 23rd July, 10am-4pm. £25 including lunch. This intensive day-long course is a must for anyone who wants to take their writing to the next level. It’s for writers who want to go professional and need to elevate their [...]
Directing the reader
One of my pet hates is reading scripts that are clearly written by someone who wants to direct their film. Every line of dialogue has a parenthesis explaining the character’s emotion, and every camera angle is detailed lovingly. This is not good script writing; in fact, it’s one of the rookie mistakes that is virtually [...]
Working your Stereotypes
Being ‘stereotyped’ is often seen as a bad thing, particularly in scripts and books. Then there’s Christopher Vogler, who theorises that there are eight ‘archetypes’ – the mentor, the hero, the ally, the herald and so on and so forth. For my part, I think that these eight have limited use. There are far more [...]
Selling your USP
I talk so much about sticking to the rules, I thought it was about time I gave an example of when breaking the rules works. A warning, though – if you haven’t seen Jurassic Park (what planet have you been living on exactly?) and don’t want it ruined then this post is not for you…
100 Ways to Cook an Egg
My first proper foray into storytelling (not counting two ‘books’ I wrote when I was six about doppelgangers – although I’m fairly sure I didn’t know what that word meant back then) was a script on Anne Boleyn. Anne’s story had caught my imagination when I was very young and she quickly became – and [...]
Stacking the Evidence: Writing Crime Shows
Cop shows are all the rage at the moment, both in the UK and overseas. A good cop show is a little gold mine: it can run and run and it doesn’t need to be big budget. Also, it doesn’t require audiences to tune in every week, so if someone joins the series half way [...]
Ticking Clocks
It’s widely acknowledged that you’ll only keep your audience interested in a story if the stakes are high. What do we mean by that? Well, you’re more likely to want to know the outcome of, say, a life saving operation than a conversation about what you had for dinner tonight (unless the dinner was laced [...]
Plot 101
Today I’m going to write about a very basic plot point. I say basic, but it’s surprising how many scripts I read where the writer has forgotten about it entirely. What am I talking about? Making your protagonist active.
The Power of Ghosts
This week I’m focusing on how absence can be a powerful thing in film. The dead hold a lot of sway over characters, whatever the genre, and usually they are integral to the character completing their quest.