The Story Department - Story. Screenplay. Sale.

Screenwriting books evangelize the importance of theme, without properly investigating thematic structure. They rightly identify that it’s the source of meaning in a story. It’s what separates great scripts from good ones.
But the same books invariably call for a thematic sentence, then move on as quickly as possible to a new topic. Why?...

https://youtu.be/PdZ76H7exZw
Pacing is critical. Rush through the story, and viewers struggle to understand what is going on. Slow down too much, and they get bored. How do you manage the pacing and rhythm of a story? Can you fix it in post?
Let’s go back a few decades....

In Variety’s Top 100 telecasts for 2021, Yellowstone features as the only cable show on the list. And while all other major scripted shows – NCIS and The Equalizer – are written by a sizeable writers’ room, Yellowstone springs from the MacBook of just...

After seeing Sicario and sourcing the script in 2015, I instantly fell for the voice of this new writer. But Taylor Sheridan was not new. His script Comancheria hit the Blacklist a few years earlier, and would hit cinemas the next year under the title...