Screenwriting 101: Mastering the Art of Story

Before "Lights! Camera! Action!" there is one thing a film must have: a good story. Look to the literary past to see how the earliest stories shape the ones we create today and use that knowledge to look at scripts and storytelling. You may be surprised to discover how cognitive science can shed light on how humans experience stories.

The first question any writer must ask is: where do I want to take my audience? Professor Fletcher shows you how to reverse engineer stories to pinpoint their cognitive effects and put those tools to use in your own writing (and viewing) experiences. Travel back to the dawn of scriptwriting and reverse engineer three storytelling innovations of ancient Greece, connecting each to a modern script.

Every script has a setting, both a time and a place where the story occurs. Your "story world" is more than the physical or temporal - what makes the world are the rules you create for it. Understand the value of the rules that underlie your story and see how genres allow you to use pre-existing structures while enabling you to embrace a multitude of possibilities.

Character is the key ingredient in most successful stories; make great characters and audiences will want to follow them anywhere. Professor Fletcher presents a simple recipe for creating memorable characters with three simple ingredients. Discover why fear is the most powerful driver of human behavior and why this is a key to creating and sustaining great characters.

Your job as the writer is to create a great story; the rest of the work is up to others. So how do you make sure your story creates the cognitive effect you want? The answer is tone. Look at the two most important ways writers shape tone and then dive into four influential tones used in screenwriting, using both literature and award-winning scripts as your guide.

One of the most common pitfalls of scriptwriting is poor plotting. The human mind is actually designed to plot - the key is learning how to constrain this natural tendency so your story doesn't simply wander. See how plotting backwards can help you stay on track and why you should forget about creating a three-act structure.