Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

Action genres turn on public values such as freedom/slavery or justice/injustice; the Education genre turns on interior values such as self-awareness/self-deception or life as meaningful/meaningless.

Life teaches this grand principle: What seems is not what is.

An unconscious desire is always more powerful and durable,

the protagonist must be the most dimensional character in the cast to focus empathy

You must shape your story in a way that both expresses your vision and satisfies the audience’s desires.

Once the Climax is in hand, stories are in a significant way rewritten backward, not forward. The flow of life moves from cause to effect, but the flow of creativity often flows from effect to cause.

Dialogue is not conversation.

people share very personal things with total strangers. And I agree. But only in California.

The Crisis must be true dilemma