How to Write a Movie in 21 Days

SOME MISCELLANEOUS USES FOR CAPS.

AD LIB: when the actors fill in the dialogue with incidental lines.

VOICE OVER (v.o.): when we hear narration over the action.

OFFSCREEN (o.s.): when we hear the character speak but he is offscreen, such as calling out from the other room.

BEGIN TITLES: when the main credits start.

END TITLES: when the main credits finish.

FREEZE FRAME: which is at left margin and punctuated with a period.

TITLES OF SONGS AND BOOKS

But this is not so. Structure is Character

Your character is your story. The events in your screenplay are going to happen as a result of who your character is. Your character invents his own reality, therefore any circumstances that befall him are circumstances he brought to himself as a result of how he views the world. So all the events in your movie are going to be external circumstances that manifest what is going on inside your character.

Our minds think structure is a scaffolding that our character climbs around in.

By page 75 it looks as if all is lost, and there’s even a scene where the hero Is just about to give up, then something happens that changes everything—an event that gives him a chance at a goal he didn’t even know he had, something he needed all along, while until now he has been going after something else.

Your tablecloth should look like this:

That’s the 9-Minute Movie. Solid support on pages 1, 3, 10, 30, 45, 60, 75, 90, and 120.

On page 90, an event occurs that “educates” the hero. He’s going to be getting something more than or something different from what he set out to get. (This point is important: if all he gets in the end is what he wanted in the beginning, he hasn’t changed. This would seem a lot of trouble for nothing. Let the hero learn something and be changed by what he’s going through.)

There is no writing that is fiction, except maybe bad writing.

Fiction is a way to tell the truth.

HOW TO KNOW WHEN YOU’RE DONE

Find that initial growth scene around page 45 and don’t let him go backward after that.