Tag: Screenwriting

How does a screenplay work?

Let's cover the subject of screenwriting by Aristotle's Poetics and by Syd Field’s Screenplay. According to Aristotle, tragedy is something that has a beginning, middle and end. In his book, Syd Field divides the film into three acts, the beginning, the confrontation and the resolution. The acts are separated by turning points. Although Syd Field did not originally develop the idea of three acts, the popularity of his book has made that structure the most frequently used. Playwrights and screenwriters before Aristotle's Poetics and Syd Field's Screenplay have managed to work successfully without these doctrines. Their methods have been more about the realization of their…

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How to introduce a character

A character in a film is not a human being, it is a work of art. We want the audience relate to the characters as they were real, so they need to be clear and understandable by design. As Robert McKee writes on his book Story, character design combines two primary aspects, Characterisation and True Character. Characterisation is all the observable qualities: physical appearance, age, sexuality, personality, attitudes, style of speech, etc. True Character is what is behind the surface: Who is this person? Loyal or disloyal? Honest or a liar? Generous or selfish?  In this post I am focusing on characterisation and how to…

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