Jim Hull's Story Fanatic

This is Story Fanatic, a collection of articles covering story structure and analysis for
creative writers. Published weekly.

Wednesday, Jun. 16

Screenplays You Don’t Want to Write

This may sound like a shocking statement, but I believe anybody can be a screenwriter. Everybody in the world has at least one interesting story in them. Life is too crazy not to have an awesome story in the vault. But the reality is, it takes a shitload of time to learn how to *tell* that story in the bastardized format that is a “screenplay.” How long it takes generally depends on how talented you are. For some people it only takes a couple of years. For others, it may take two decades to figure out. So a lot of screenwriting comes down to perseverance and a willingness to learn.

An entertaining list of screenwriting pitfalls follows.