Too much screenwriting advice ft John

Truby, Robert McKee, Viki King, Blake

Snyder, and more
Over the years, I’ve consumed a lot of material on how to write a
screenplay. Below is a curated collection of the notes I’ve taken,
including screenwriting books, podcasts (a quick plug
for Scriptnotes, my favorite of them all), and of course the stalwart
Robert McKee.
If you want an entertaining and practical dive into the how-to’s of
screenwriting, your best bet is Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat
[Amazon]. It’s a fast read, and the information is immediately useful.
My favorite book of the bunch is John Truby’s The Anatomy of Story
[Amazon]. His blend of theory, psychology, and practical advice lit
the most proverbial lightbulbs for me. And I’m only halfway through.
And if you’re more visual, watch Michael Tucker’s Lessons from the
Screenplay [YouTube]. They’re plain fun to watch and help you
appreciate the tremendous depth and insight and execution that
goes into great films.
NOTES NOTES NOTES NOTES NOTES

The Anatomy of Story, John Truby

• Audiences love both the feeling part (reliving the life) and the
thinking part (figuring out the puzzle) of a story. Every good
story has both.
• A story tracks what a person wants, what he’ll do to get it, and
what costs he’ll have to pay along the way.
• So the ultimate goal of the dramatic code, and of the storyteller,
is to present a change in a character or to illustrate why that
change did not occur.
• Classic short stories usually track a few events that lead the
character to gain a single important insight.
• Nine out of ten writers fail at the premise
• Example premise for Huck Finn: “believably showing a simple
and not entirely admirable boy gaining great moral insight.”
• Step 1: Write Something That May Change Your Life
• That’s the difference between a premise, which all stories have,
and a designing principle—which only good stories have. The
premise is concrete; it’s what actually happens. The designing
 principle is abstract; it is the deeper process going on in the
story, told in an original way. Stated in one line: Designing
principle = story process + original execution
• Tootsie:
• Premise: When an actor can’t get work, he disguises himself as a
woman and gets a role in a TV series, only to fall in love with one
of the female members of the cast.
• Designing Principle: Force a male chauvinist to live as a woman.
• One way of coming up with a designing principle is to use a
journey or similar traveling metaphor. Huck Finn’s raft trip
down the Mississippi River with Jim, Marlow’s boat trip up the
river into the “heart of darkness,” Leopold Bloom’s travels
through Dublin in Ulysses,
• Sometimes a single symbol can serve as the designing principle,
as with the red letter A in The Scarlet Letter, the island in The
Tempest, the whale in Moby-Dick, or the mountain in The Magic
Mountain.
• KEY POINT: Always tell a story about your best character. “Best”
doesn’t mean “nicest.” It means “the most fascinating,
challenging, and complex,” even if that character isn’t
particularly likable.
• If you can’t find a character you love implied in the story idea,
move on to another idea. If you find him but he is not currently
the main character, change the premise right now so that he is.
• To figure out the central conflict, ask yourself “Who fights whom
over what?” and answer the question in one succinct line.
• Is this single story line unique enough to interest a lot of people
besides me? This is the question of popularity, of commercial
appeal. You must be ruthless in answering it.
• From the very beginning of the story, your hero has one or more
great weaknesses that are holding him back. Something is
missing within him that is so profound, it is ruining his life
• KEY POINT: Your hero should not be aware of his need at the
beginning of the story.
• A true opponent not only wants to prevent the hero from
achieving his desire but is competing with the hero for the same
goal.
• This technique of starting at the end and going back to the
beginning is one we will use again and again as we figure out
character, plot, and theme. It’s one of the best techniques in
fiction writing because it guarantees that your hero and your
 story are always heading toward the true endpoint of the
structural journey, which is the self-revelation.
• You want to give your opponent a special ability to attack your
hero’s greatest weakness, and to do so incessantly while he tries
to win the goal.
• The relationship between the hero and the opponent is the
single most important relationship in the story. In working out
the struggle between these two characters, the larger issues and
themes of the story unfold.
• The subplot character, like the ally and the opponent, provides
another opportunity to define the hero through comparison and
advance the plot. The ally helps the hero reach the main goal.
The subplot character tracks a line parallel to the hero, with a
different result.
• The central concept of love stories is quite profound. Love
stories say that a person does not become a true individual by
being alone. A person becomes a unique and authentic individual
only by entering into a community of two.
• The buddy strategy allows you essentially to cut the hero into
two parts, showing two different approaches to life and two sets
of talents. These two characters are “married” into a team in
such a way that the audience can see their differences but also
see how these differences actually help them work well together
• One of the most important elements of the buddy web has to do
with the fundamental conflict between the friends. There is a
snag in the relationship that keeps interfering. This allows an
ongoing opposition between the two leads in a traveling story
where most of the other opponents are strangers who quickly
come and go.
Save the Cat by Black Snyder
• And yet, so the rules tell us and human nature dictates, we don’t
want to see anyone, even the most underdog character, succeed
for too long. And eventually, the hero must learn that magic isn’t
everything, it’s better to be just like us —us members of the
audience —because in the end we know this will never happen
to us. Thus a lesson must be in the offing; a good moral must be
included at the end.
• Look at Point Break starring Patrick Swayze, then look at Fast
and Furious. Yes, it’s the same movie almost beat for beat. But
one is about surfing, the other is about hot cars.
• There’s the “good girl tempted” archetype – pure of heart, cute
as a bug: Betty Grable, Doris Day, Meg Ryan (in her day), Reese
Witherspoon. This is the female counterpart of the young man
on the rise.
• The rule of thumb in all these cases is to stick to the basics no
matter what. Tell me a story about a guy who…
• I can identify with.
• I can learn from.
• I have compelling reason to follow.
• I believe deserves to win and…
• Has stakes that are primal and ring true for me.
• Not to get too self-protective, but a strong structure guarantees
your writing credit. More than any other element, the bones of a
screenplay, as constructed in the story beats of your script, will
be proof to those who decide who gets credit at the Writers
Guild of America (WGA) that the work is primarily yours.
• The hero cannot be lured, tricked, or drift into Act Two. The hero
must make the decision himself. That’s what makes him a hero
anyway —being proactive.
• When you, the development exec, ask for “more set pieces,” this
is where I put them. In the fun and games.
• a movie’s midpoint is either an “up” where the hero seemingly
peaks (though it is a false peak) or a “down” when the world
collapses all around the hero (though it is a false collapse), and it
can only get better from here on out
• At the All Is Lost moment, stick in something, anything that
involves a death. It works every time. Whether it’s integral to the
story or just something symbolic, hint at something dead here. It
could be anything. A flower in a flower pot. A goldfish. News that
a beloved aunt has passed away.
• And its logline —an ugly duckling FBI agent goes undercover as
a contestant to catch a killer at the American Miss pageant —
certainly satisfies the four elements from Chapter One: irony,
compelling picture, audience and cost, and a killer title.
• Thus, she has reached a classic All Is Lost moment: She is worse
off than when this movie started!
• You must take time to frame the hero’s situation in a way that
makes us root for him, no matter who he is or what he does.
• The Covenant of the Arc is the screenwriting law that says: Every
single character in your movie must change in the course of your
 story. The only characters who don’t change are the bad guys.
But the hero and his friends change a lot.
• In many a well-told movie, the hero and the bad guy are very
often two halves of the same person struggling for supremacy,
and for that reason are almost equal in power and ability. How
many movies can you name that have a hero and a bad guy who
are two halves of the same persona? Think about Batman
(Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson), Die Hard (Bruce Willis and
Alan Rickman), and even Pretty Woman (Richard Gere and Jason
Alexander).
• Make sure every character has “A Limp and an Eyepatch.” Every
character has to have a unique way of speaking, but also
something memorable that will stick him in the reader’s mind.
• Four Quadrant – Men Over 25, Men Under 25, Women Over 25,
Women Under 25
• Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis – aka, Acts One, Two, and Three
Robert McKee on screenwriting and life
• Novels are the best format for inner conflict
• Theater are the best format for p2p conflict, dialogue
• Film is at its best in showing man’s conflict with the world, the
external
• Can tell right away what skill a writer has by how they handle
exposition
• Spielberg: brilliant craftsmanship, nothing to say
• TV is the most creative medium today
• Generally the screenplay gets better and better and better
through filming and acting and production but that’s not talked
about, only when it gets worse
• Sometimes novels or memoirs usually get published by a 23 yo
but they’re just there to annoy the good writers who take 10
years to master their craft and write something of quality
• Many years ago the worst thing that could happen was you’d die.
So stories were about how to survive. There are far worse things
today. People in living hells. People could at least understand the
plague. Who can understand banking? Parenting?
• Need a MINIMUM of 3 major reversals in any story. eg, Raiders
of Lost Ark
How to write a movie in 21 days, Viki King
• Can you find a line of dialogue on page 3 that introduces a
central question? Every scene after this builds on that central
question
• One thing that happens in storytelling is that we tend to start
telling the story from far away. For instance, we tell it in hearsay
scenes (the funeral) rather than by depicting the action (car
crash). We tell it in minor characters (the girlfriend) rather than
through the character it really happened to (the drunk driver).
• By page 10, you’ll need to tell us what the story is. Keep setting
up more and more information so that we know what the hero
wants
• We should enter a scene at the last best moment; that is, if you
want character A to slap character B, don’t have A pull up in the
car, enter the building, ride up in the elevator, and so forth. Just
CUT TO the slap.
• The event that happens on page 30 throws your character a
curve. He is forced to respond or react. He might make a plan. He
decides on a goal to pursue because of what’s happened.
• See if you can identify the page 45 scene. This is usually a small
scene with symbolic overtones. (If it’s a young girl growing up,
we see the teddy bear abandoned face down on the window seat
next to the cosmetics.) This scene gives us a clue to the
resolution.
• By page 75 it looks like all is lost; there’s even a scene where
your hero is just about to give up. But then something happens
that changes everything: an event that gives him a chance at a
goal he didn’t even know he had.
• 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.
• Page 45 is the symbolic growth scene. It is a taste of where your
hero will get to. Page 60 is where he commits wholeheartedly to
his dream. In Gone With the Wind Scarlett holds the carrots up
to the sky and says, “As God is my witness, I’ll never go hungry
again.” And she spends the second half of the movie holding to
that commitment.
• Have your character complete this statement now: “As God is my
witness, I will _____ _____ _____.”
• For the first half of Act II, (pages 30 to 60), your hero is saying, “I
want it. I want it.” And the stakes against him are obstacles that
seem to say, “you can’t have it.”
• Inner Movie Axiom: In order to have a dream become a reality, it
must be given up as a dream.
 • From pages 75 to 90 you’ll move very fast. Your hero got up the
mountain, and now he’s shooting the rapids on the other side.
• Answer these questions:
• Does your hero get what he wanted?
• What last thing does he have to give up to get it?
• How is he different in the end than he was in the beginning?
• Remember your first scene of the movie—see if the last scene
can be an answer to that scene. We call this bookends.
• Remember the good feeling you get when you watch a movie
and it starts to pay off at the end? It’s exciting; when the Raiders
finally found the lost ark and looked inside; when Humphrey
Bogart and Ingrid Bergman are finally at the airport in
Casablanca. Be dramatic here. Give us some beautiful closing
moments.
From Brandon Sanderson’s lecture notes, The Hero’s Journey
1. Object-at-rest: the Hero is at home, doing nothing much.
2. Call #1: the Hero is summoned. He usually refuses.
3. Call #2: the Hero is summoned. He can no longer refuse.
4. Journey Begins: what it says on the tin.
5. Loss of Mentor: crap is now real.
6. Descent into Underworld: crap is now realer.
7. Confront the Evil Within Themselves: crap is now THE REALEST.
8. Apotheosis/Everything Comes Together: often using skills learned
between steps 4 and 5, the Hero succeeds in his goal.
9. Return Home (Upgraded): in the falling action, the Hero comes
home having defeated the Bad Guy—but, more notably, having
defeated the Bad Guy in himself.

Random notes:
• Craig Mazin: In character descriptions, describe their wardrobe,
hair, and makeup
• What is each character terrified of? That’s their inner struggle
and how they need to transform
• to paraphrase Alex Macquarrie’s tweet, it’s all about FEAR – who
creates it, who avoids it, who confronts and overcomes it
• Great scenes often include dialogue where characters ask a lot of
questions. Questions propel action, demand a reply. It also alerts
the audience because they think they’re being asked the
question
• Great scenes often rotate around one word or one phrase. For
example, from Remains of the Day, the scene where Anthony
 Hopkins and Emma Thompson keep talking about a “book”,
batting the word back and forth to each other
—