What the Best Female Protagonists Teach us About Life

While co-teaching “The Heroine’s Journey: Writing and Selling the Female-driven Screenplay” with Pamela Gray — who wrote the scripts for “A Walk on the Moon” with Diane Lane, “Music of the Heart” with Meryl Streep and “Conviction” with Hilary Swank — we realized that...

How Storytellers Tell the Most Heartwarming Stories

En route to Sundance, I was thinking about last year’s favorite, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, and how storytellers tell the most heartwarming stories like Little Miss Sunshine, Juno, Billy Elliot, Six Feet Under, and Sense and Sensibility.  What do all of these...

24 Things to Know About Thrillers

Here are 24 things to know about crafting thrillers: 1) Thriller is a combination of crime and horror stories where a detective or an average person acting like detective is victimized and in great danger. (Note: see John Truby on thriller). 2) The stakes for the main...

What You Need to Know About Human Comedies (or dramedies)

These are the essential elements of human comedies, or “dramedies”:   These family dramas with comic overtones tend to be “feel good” movies that also have depth and meaning. The comedy tends to be less overt as the humor comes from a deep empathy for characters...