Category: Writing
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How I Wrote My First Book
After releasing my first book If These Fists Could Talk: A Stuntman’s Unflinching Take on Violence (on Amazon), I started thinking about how I made my first short film, or my first feature film. Making those things requires a team, some cash, and technical know-how. But writing a book requires one person (you), a computer,…
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Vaporwave – Prophesying the Death of Culture
Vaporwave is fascinating. Something about it is very soothing, despite being totally eerie. I’ve used some Vaporwave aesthetics in some of my past videos: I began obsessing over this strange sub-genre of music. The air of nostalgia you get from this stuff is mind-boggling. For example, if you’re an American born in the 80s, then…
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Writing a feature film script in 3 days
(I’m blogging more regularly as I prep an indie action-comedy animation I wrote called Lester. Most people think it’s too ambitious to do something like this, but they said that when I did Contour as well. So I’m blogging about it, hoping that more of you will try it out someday. Lester will be a…
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The Attraction of Twists – And why not to do them
If you’ve made a pitch in the past ten years, you understand the euphoric sensation when someone says, “I didn’t see that coming!” But working that twist into your narrative in a meaningful way only results in pain and misery. The “twist” is good for pitches, but consider ditching it as soon as outlining phase…
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Structure for a fight scene
Recently I posted about story structure. Typically, the entire story has 40 or so scenes, each one with a beginning and end. What to do with the stuff in between? That’s where more structure comes in, and you can literally use the same structure to figure out the beats of a scene. This way, there’s…
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Quick template for a film synopsis – and why 90 minutes for action films
Since I’m juggling ten different concepts and have to choose two for our next project lineup, I have to find quick ways to organize them and present them to interested parties. I’ve developed a rough template that I’ve started using when formulating a synopsis, which is a combination of Save The Cat styling and my…
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If you write, read Save The Cat
Action films are very structure-based, so they require solid construction to guide you through the dramatic turns that can keep the audience glued to their seats in between action sets. Save The Cat is just right for the job. You might get six pages through it before your idea is magically re-ignited, which makes this…