Five Fast Fixes for Your Feature Film

The Keys to Developing Viable Movies

Saturday, April 5th, 10-11:30am (PST)

by Founder Jeffrey Gordon (JG)

Event access via zoom only–once you RSVP, zoom will control your access.

You can RSVP Here

Please join JG for a short discussion of the main ingredients of storytelling that comprise the most interesting concepts for movies, TV and books and novels adapted for the big and small screen.

For perspective, it’s very difficult to enhance a project idea from the inside out, so these Five Fast Fixes are priority focal points to unify the work and the effort you’ve expended in your early draft.

Writers Boot Camp’s overriding philosophy and unique set of creative tools emphasize the importance of rewriting. Yet the success of rewriting is contingent on creating a more complete idea to engage the inherent layers of your story–if you’re aware of its layers at the outset.

In other words, a prerequisite of creating a complete story is knowing how to structure an idea, including making decisions about how it works and how the principal characters are connected and interact.

We’ll cover these five areas for fast fixes, as well as allow space for creative questions:

–Clarifying the Dynamic Relationship is the top way to fix any script or story, one where the events on the page feel less elevated and episodic in that interpersonal consequences fail to impact layers of relationship.  Instead of dropping in new scenes and encounters that seem entertaining on their face, Writers Boot Camp’s Dynamic Progression of Conflict focuses the 2nd Act as a container for fresh entertainment while deepening character stakes.

–Another way to enhance the audience experience is to differentiate the adventure from other stories in the genre by providing a very specific goal not seen before, in effect grounding the Main Character and clarifying their personal jeopardy. As the story expands, the goal becomes more imminent.

–A clearer goal for your Main Character will also activate the sense of genre. By studying the expectations, conventions, devices, nature of action, archetypes and paradigms of other stories with similar emotional impact, you can make stronger choices to enhance the elements of your story to “do the genre well”. This will give the audience a familiar experience yet one that separates it from other recent fare (fair). And it will give an experienced reader something to appreciate and to remember you for other genre projects.

–Focusing on character stakes, you can create an interesting 3rd-Party Opponent–often related to genre expectations–to increase the visceral experience of the story, as well as create more intrigue, nuanced character motivation and a palpable ticking clock.

–And, informing all the above choices, you can specify a theme that extends a topic or area of subject matter to further articulate and argue in a manner that affirms or alters previously accepted tenets. When you depict a Main Character in a circumstance their experience of the story is ultimately an illustration of its meaning. Selection of action is not an accident when writing; it’s a conscious choice to foster a specific result.

Additional Note About Our Professional View

While Writers Boot Camp’s tools ritually help writers become more productive and efficient with their time, it’s professionally important to refine your creative point of view and artistic intent.

Career breakthroughs after numerous scripts and struggles are mostly due to a writer’s hard-fought epiphanies from countless critiques by producers, executives, friends in the business and gatekeepers (readers). Undeterred, the integration of the layers of comment can finally foster a writer’s own authority. The best writers do not take years and years to get a clearer picture of the process and the profession.

But early on, a writer’s lack of idea testing, their failure to compare and distinguish ideas to the lineage of what’s come before, will tend to limit success and creative transcendence.

Feel free to invite your most clever and creative friend looking for support as a writer or filmmaker, or an actor creating a platform or vehicle for success.

If you RSVP and your plans change, please let us know. Otherwise, we will be expecting you.

For questions, call 310/998-1199 or email jg@writersbootcamp.com.