Sublime

In a story, audiences must always know who the hero is, what the hero wants, who the hero has to defeat to get what they want, what tragic thing will happen if the hero doesn’t win, and what wonderful thing will happen if they do.

Character

By the time you finish your last draft, you must possess a commanding knowledge of your setting in such depth and detail that no one could raise a question about your world—from the eating habits of your characters to the weather in September—that you couldn’t answer instantly.

If exposition is a scene’s sole justification, a disciplined writer will trash it and weave its information into the film elsewhere. No scene that doesn’t turn.

The biographer must interpret facts as if they were fiction, find the meaning of the subject’s life, and then cast him as the protagonist of his life’s genre:

Establish a Framing Device: Establish how this story will be told, the glue that holds it together.

Secure writers don’t sell first drafts.

Set-up (including mini inciting incident) Confrontation (conflict ending in crisis point) (Climax and) Resolution.