Sean Lawrence

Lights Out  Beat Sheet!   STC! Software 4.0 with Quick Tour Now Available! Plus, New April 17 Online Course with Ben Frahm! View this email in your browser News & Updates From Our Master Cats Lights Out  Beat Sheet Can a film hit all the beats, be primal, and eventually score the filmmaker major Hollywood feature deals... in just two minutes? The now infamous short  Lights Out  from director David F. Sandberg -- whose latest directorial work is  Shazam! --  proves that it can!  On this week's blog, watch  Lights Out  and then immediately relive the chills with a beat sheet from Don Roff.  READ MORE » ALL NEW! Save the Cat! Story Structure Software 4.0  It's the biggest overhaul to our software ever! Built from the ground up for all storytellers, from film and TV writers to novelists. It's never been easier to structure your story. QUICK...

Characters are the moving pieces to your story. No characters? No story. No interest. And no fun. But the story does not cure lack of characters. A screenplay is only a glimpse into a specific set of characters at a specific time. They exist before your story and after. Remember this before you start typing away. If you don't, that typing won't be worth the paper each letter is printed on. Below are a few tips on how to solidify your characters before they ever enter your screenplay. First… Focus on characteristics, not backstory. Make sure to start each character's web, list, etc. with the most basic of human traits. How does he or she walk? Talk? How would they play sports? Would they say "thank you" or simply grunt? Start basic (from the ground) and build up as you get more and more foundation.  Second… Allow those characteristics to build a backstory. Got all of these characteristics on paper? Now weave that individual's existence. Sustain the pe...

Putting together a story from A to Z is a process that requires planning, time and consistent bursts of effort. Each one of those stages needs fuel. Fuel comes in strange forms, but the one we should all embrace as writers (and readers) is weirdness. It's inside of us and it morphs every day. So, how can we exorcise this daily weirdness and funnel it into efforts that will produce the results we want? 1. Voice Recorders and Notebooks You have heard it before and we will say it again (and probably again at some point). Having one of these around you at all times not only allows you to record your immediate weird thoughts, but it subconsciously encourages you to have them. 90% of these thoughts won't amount to anything more than some wasted page space or memory, but that other 10% is worth every bit of effort.  2. The Daily Writing Perspective This is a much larger scale philosophy (compared to a specific tactic), but one that can help your daily production of pages. ...

Everyone is different in their writing process. Some of us write for hours and "crank it out." Others write in chunks. And others have a hard time even starting page one. This tip supports the checkpoint (chunk) writers. Chunk writing is a great place to start as a screenwriter. A screenplay is first a blueprint. When a it is edited is when it turns into a story. First drafts are to get the A to Z out of our system. But, this is hard. Designating specific stopping points will help get initial pacing out of the way. Don't put all faith in this first step, though, as this pacing will change. That's a promise.  Remember, structure is important. Yes, certain actions and transformations should be happening at certain spots in your script. But feel free to bend that traditional model in ways that are coherent. Coherency, over anything, is most important. One of the best ways to obtain this coherency? Write. In. Chunks.  The next time you sit down to outline, dra...

We are always giving tips on how to spark writing and how to make sure a certain amount of pages gets done. But what about when you get on a roll and the pages are flying? When, maybe, you are going so fast that you might need to look back on what you are actually writing… When we do find our writing groove, we tend to hum through pages. It's the Will Ferrell "black out" scene from  Old School  all over again. But looking back on those pages can sometimes prove disappointing. Our formatting is sloppy. The action lines are not crisp and concise. And the dialogue sounds terrible when read aloud. So how can we ensure that a writing  mood  does not produce crap writing?  1. Go Slower Than Usual STOP! And take each page for each page. A tip that can help this is to edit each page after you write it. If you feel yourself blowing through pages, then go back and reread the page and make sure its contents line up with that segment of your story.  2. Pr...

Dialogue deserves to be good. What it doesn't deserve is a fate of false reality where the conversation is robotic, stiff and uneasy. It needs to flow when reading aloud. Not once should you question if "that sounds real." Your dialogue needs to be 100% realistic for the universe and characters you are creating.  But what litmus test can be used as a reliable filter for believable dialogue? Let alone good dialogue. Well… PRINT OUT YOUR PAGES AND READ THEM WITH SOMEONE WHO IS NOT AFFILIATED WITH SCREENWRTING. Got parents? Give them a try. A brother? Sister? They'll work too. Cousins work well here also. This will help trim your dialogue and it will help eliminate clunky sentences and excessive exposition.  As a screenwriter, you understand formatting and [hopefully] where to carve out good scenes of back and forth. Be confident with this notion. If you feel a scene is in desperate need of an exchange, go for it. But editing (as it always should be) is wha...

You have heard this repeated hundreds of times. It's like someone is banging your head on the wall for you. But, it is because there's a large amount of truth to it. Of course, there are exceptions, but ultimately if you can't create an engaging push within those first ten to twelve pages then you need to rework something.  A common problem we hear with these first pages is how to gain propulsion quickly, but effectively (effectively = engaging). A lot of things need to happen in these first pages, right? Yes, but this structure can be executed in a lot of different ways. One thing to NOT do is drag out an "artistic" opening. What is this? Well, it's that influence we have in our heads that tells us to drag out action lines all throughout those first pages. You know, where our lead showers, then shave, then gives a thousand yard stare in a mirror contemplating life. Don't do this. It's boring. It takes up valuable intro time. And it is predic...