Mark Voelpel @StoryScience_

The only continuity that matters in storytelling is dramatic continuity. That cut contains a leap of 4 million years in less than twentieth of a second. It’s dramatic continuity is stunning, perfect, and unforgettable, while it encapsulates the dramatic meaning of the entire move.

@FinishLineScrip Great point. Another reason that storytellers use flashbacks is so can can choose when, where, and how to reveal crucial information (as opposed to revealing everything chronologically, within the world of the story).

@FinishLineScrip Do you think it’s easier to determine if a scene “moves the story forward” or not by studying the outline or by studying the entire ~100 page script?

Gore Vidal: “Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.” #writing

“You always replace one illusion with another illusion. Always… So your wanting to be free from illusion is an impossibility. That itself is an illusion. Why do you want to be free from illusions? That's the end of you.” —U.G. Krishnamurti

WHY HOLLYWOOD HATES WRITERS AND WHY THIS LATEST CRAZE WILL QUICKLY FAIL So Backrooms predictably sends Hollywood running to Reddit for new ideas. It’s the latest pathetic excuse for studio development execs who seem completely incapable of doing their actual job: developing real movies from scratch. Let me cut to the ending first: Half a dozen or so ideas will be bought cheaply and developed expensively. None will get made. If one somehow does get produced and is marginally successful, the next batch will be bought at inflated prices… and quietly shelved. Then Hollywood will chase the next shiny fad with no memory of this one. You can probably already guess why this trend will fail. But to truly understand why Hollywood keeps humiliating itself with these embarrassingly absurd treasure hunts, I'll outline in this thread the entire dysfunctional history the industry has with creators, writers and story. #Hollywood #Backrooms #Screenwriting #FilmHistory #HollywoodNonsense #CreativeBankruptcy hollywoodreporter.com/business/digit… via @thr

@wcmartell As they say: “Buy on rumor. Sell on news!”

John Frankenheimer on the kind of training & mindset that is required to become a great director: "At the end of the day you have to be a great storyteller. And you have to be able to master the tools that you have to tell the story, which are, in order of importance, the script, the actors, and then the technical means. You should have studied drama, how it works, the three-act structure. I think that’s basic. You have to be able to communicate with actors. It’s very well for William Wyler to say, “I just want it better,” and do 30 or 40 takes, but there’s only one William Wyler. And you have to find a way to master the tools of your trade. There are so many people making movies today that know absolutely zero about the camera. To my mind, that’s personal su!c!de. They say to the cameraman “Well, how should we photograph this scene?” And the cameraman photographs it the way he or she thinks is best. That’s wrong. The young director should have a collaborative relationship with the cameraman the way Wyler and Welles did with Gregg Toland. A director has to have tremendous input into where the camera is, what it sees and how the film will be edited. You have to have knowledge to do that. They may even learn some of it in film school, but there’s no substitute for going out and doing it." ("John Frankenheimer: Interviews, Essays & Profiles", Edited by Stephen B. Armstrong, 2013) Clip from: The Letter (1940) Director: William Wyler

"I'm not interested in 'having written' something. What I care most about is writing." - Micah Fitzerman A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019), Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019), Transparent (2015-2017), and The Legend of Master Legend (2017) #screenwriting #screenwriter

@JamesLucasIT That reminds me of story structure.

@SapienAssassin Agreed. The journey is inward.

The next great American novel is going to be written by someone the literary world would never take seriously, and that’s exactly why it will be a masterpiece. Nobody with a MFA from a fancy school, a book deal, an agent, a trust fund can write this era of America. It’s not possible. All they can do is stand outside and describe it with pretty words. It’ll come from somebody who lived the last 20 years of this country from inside its throat. They won’t have to describe anything because they’ve been breathing it, eating it, surviving it, and begging it for mercy. That’s the ONLY next great American novel worth reading. If it’s you, don’t stop.

@SketchesbyBoze @BretVDB I really enjoyed the Mandelbaum too!

@RoyPrice Are we allowed to look at our phone between reps at the gym???

@Noirchick1 Paulette G.

@JaceSerrano You need to brand and trademark these three criteria for yourself ASAP. Gold.

“I have found that a story leaves a deeper impression when it is impossible to tell which side the author is on.” —Leo Tolstoy

@stevenmartini Isn't that the plot of both Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway?

"Microsoft Excel is the novelist's most important friend." Bestselling thriller writer Andrew Hunter Murray plots every novel in a spreadsheet. Here's how he uses it: "I'll just look at my scenes and ask: have we learned enough here? Does the scene need to be here? It can't just be, 'oh, let's have a scene set in the fireworks factory,' and we won't really learn anything. If you look at your spreadsheet and you think, I've got four chapters here and there's not the pace in any of them to propel the reader forward, I gotta fix that."

David Perell @david_perell

a month ago

Andrew Hunter Murray and I talked about how he writes novels with Excel, his obsession with finding crazy facts, and why he loves Jane Austen so much. Timestamps: 0:26 What makes for a good premise? 5:54 How to write Sci-Fi 7:51 Sci-Fi vs. literature 15:41 Why Andrew writes

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