Breaking story basically means figuring out the screenplay’s blueprint — mapping out a story and coming up with a logically and dramatically consistent beginning, middle, and end, and the major checkpoints therein. ROBIN I finally broke story on that period family-horror-comedy idea I’ve been wrestling with. BRAD Nice! It’s cause for a small celebration. ### […]
What is a treatment?
A treatment is essentially a prose version of your screenplay, although its exact definition can vary from person to person. Usually, treatments differ from outlines in that they look more like short stories where outlines look more like breakdowns or bulleted lists, but this is a bit of a generalization. Most feature treatments are around […]
What is the hero’s journey?
The hero’s journey is the epic structure defined by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Campbell argues that the great enduring myths from around the world all share an underlying structure he calls the “monomyth.” In the introduction to his book, Campbell breaks it down: >A hero ventures forth from the world […]
What is standard screenplay format?
While there can be slight variations for different types of scripts (ie multicam sitcom teleplays), screenplays follow strict formatting rules. Fortunately, software like Highland, will do the heavy lifting for you. Here are the basics: More from johnaugust.com
How should fight scenes or action scenes be written?
There is no universal way of writing action scenes. As with all formatting advice, the goal is to clearly express your vision without taking the reader out of the screenplay. However that is best accomplished for your scene is the right way to write it. In a [2011 blog post](http://johnaugust.com/2011/writing-fight-scenes), John August offers this headline: […]
What is a slug?
A slug or slugline (or “slug line”) is an uppercase line of text with a blank line above and below it. While the term slugline can be used interchangeably with scene heading, it more often refers to an “intermediary slugline,” which is used to break up and re-focus a longer scene, or to point out […]