To answer these questions, this episode look at how films with “darker” or “sadder” tones teach the reader what they can laugh at, namely: THE NICE GUYS, THE BANSHEES OF INISHIRIN and the pilot for YELLOWJACKETS.
As part of their ongoing exploration of scene-work, Stu and Chas apply their earlier thinking on theme and character worldview to individual scenes. Can examining a scene from a thematic perspective impact the drama, conflict or stakes of the scene? How does your character’s conscious and subconscious world views dramatise the overall theme of the work? How can an individual scene reflect the larger themes of the overall story? Do any of these questions or approaches lead to writing better scenes?
To this end, Stu and Chas examine particular scenes from works that have particularly apparent, strong and consistent themes; namely: FINDING NEMO, EX MACHINA, MANCHESTER BY THE SEA and the Netflix TV series GLOW.
How do you make unlikeable characters compelling to watch… in drama? Stu and Chas revisit a topic from a year ago: how do screenwriters make unlikeable characters compelling? This time, we turn our focus to dramas and analyse how AMERICAN HISTORY X, YOUNG ADULT, NIGHTCRAWLER all make their a**hole protagonists compelling to watch. We expand our original list of five writer’s tools to […]