An interesting article on how Pixar focuses on writing complete stories from Story Fanatic.
Archive | Story
Positioning Yourself as a Writer: Choosing Genre
By Monica on February 10, 2010 in Audience, Ideas, Process, Story, Subject Matter, Theme, Tone, Uncategorized
It’s probably worth your time to think about how you want to get sold as a writer. If you have material worth selling, at some point someone is going to discover this, and they’ll try to package you and sell you as a certain kind of writer. What kind of writer do you want to […]
Be Careful When Mixing Genre: Jennifer’s Body
By Monica on February 9, 2010 in Audience, Character, Genre, Logical World, Story, Subject Matter, Theme, Tone, Uncategorized
I’m sitting here watching Jennifer’s Body, which is a movie I should love. I think the concept is amazing – a girl who gets taken advantage of by men only to turn the tables and start fucking over men. It should be edgy, fucking hilarious, scary as shit and I was expecting this movie to […]
Who Are You Writing For?
By Monica on February 8, 2010 in Character, Genre, Ideas, Logical World, Story, Subject Matter, Theme, Tone, Uncategorized
I was Skyping with a writer friend the other night who had sent me a list of about 10 loglines and was wanting to brainstorm which project to write next. He later sent me an email indicating he’d chosen to write a horror movie starring a young boy character and, in essence, a CGI character. […]
To All The Haters
Recently I got a comment on the blog that I decided not to post because it was clearly from a Hater. “Hater” is the term I use to describe angry, reactive people who are foul and negative only to assert their hostile position – however, in most cases, their position isn’t fueled by logic but […]
Trusting Your Gut: Writing Passion vs. Structure
I’m visiting with one of my best friends now whose son, my godson, tragically died in October. This is a part of why I haven’t been writing since that time. I’ve also been trying to prioritize my own creative writing, but I’ve not had an easy time getting those pages in, either. It’s cold and […]
Inside Out vs. Outside In
By Monica on November 14, 2009 in Character, Genre, Ideas, Logical World, Process, Story, Theme, Uncategorized
The great debate: character to story or concept to character. Face it: you’re either one or the other. If you think you’re both at the same time, I’d really love to hear from you and learn how you do it, because it seems to me there’s a huge canyon in between and I’m waiting for […]
Deadlines: A Lesson in How Not To Psych Yourself Out
aka Working With Your Internal Critic So over the past couple of weeks I’ve been writing a draft for a deadline. It was a pretty tight deadline – but I was determined to finish and to do the best that I could. I decided that I would assign a page count per day and get […]
Different Stories Call for Different Techniques
My standard technique for approaching story has been pretty static since I studied in private workshop with Syd Field years ago, although was honed at AFI: start with the six beats, write a synopsis, card out my story, create the beat sheet, and then write the script based on my beat sheet. Now that I’ve […]
Director Michael Hoffman on Finding the Truth of the Story
I had another favorite moment in the Telluride Film Festival Q&A after the screening of Michael Hoffman’s “The Last Station,” about the last year of Leo Tolstoy’s life. The movie stars Christopher Plummer as Tolstoy, Helen Mirren as his wife, James McAvoy, Paul Giamatti and Kerry Condon. Ken Burns moderated a discussion with Helen Mirren […]
Playing With Ideas: Part I
I guess lately I’m in the zone, because I feel like every time I talk with someone I end up giggling like an idiot and saying, “Hey, that would make a great starting concept for a movie.” Of course, I don’t generally point this out to other writers. Well, sometimes. But, non-writers usually tilt their […]
We Write to our Weaknesses
I’m still in the stage wherein every time I embark upon a new project, I’m teaching myself something about the technical process of writing and also about the human experience. I think the greatest gift a writer can give is in illuminating the human experience in a fresh or unique way, and in the experience […]
You Don’t Need To Be on the Page
By Monica on August 13, 2009 in Character, Logical World, Process, Story, Subject Matter, Theme, Tone, Uncategorized
I was having a conversation this morning with another writer friend, and we had a little bit of a laugh (but not in a malicious way) about another writer who fancies himself a director and this is evident in his writing because he, meaning his personality, is everywhere on the page. When you read his […]
Be Smart About When You Write What
This is intended as a follow up post to Write What You Love. I went to AFI for film school where, I imagine distinct from USC and UCLA, we didn’t really learn much, if anything, about the entertainment business. I learned a ton about writing and the writing process – but as far as the […]
Write the Movies You Really Want To See
This is intended as a follow up post to Write What You Love. Okay. This might sound ridiculous, but bear with me. Say a magic genie appeared tonight before you fell asleep, Shazam!, and gave you a magic ticket to the best movie ever the following day, what movie would you want to see? If […]