[Watch the video interview on Youtube here]
Film Courage: How important is the climax? At what point in their process should writers figure out what their story’s climax is going to be?
Jill Chamberlain, Script Consultant/Author/Writer: The climax is kind of everything, it’s so important. In some ways it’s what the story is.
Stories can start in lots of different places but they really can only end in one place and they tell us what the whole story was about. If you don’t know your climax you don’t really know your story, you just have a premise. The climax is the answer to what this was all about or it’s the beginning of that.
People come to me (I have private clients, as well as I do this in my classes), they’ve filled out their Nutshell Technique form, they’re all excited about it, we’re going through it. I’ll tell them I’m not going to be attached to anything you say really until I hear your climax. You can tell me what the character wants, you can tell me the character’s flaw, that’s all good, but I’m flexible in my brain until I hear a climax because if you don’t have a climax yet or if you don’t have a good one, we’re going to stop. I’m going to stop right then and there. I’m going to talk with you because you don’t know your story yet we’ve got to figure that out.
The definition of a great ending is that it’s inevitable yet unexpected. This is attributed to Aristotle but sometimes it’s not certain that he said that. Whatever it is, a great ending is inevitable yet unexpected, that’s a pretty tall order by the way, but that is our goal as writers is to find an ending. When we say ending we…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
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About:
Jill Chamberlain is the founder of a screenwriting school, a script consultant, a screenwriter, and the author of The Nutshell Technique: Crack the Secret to Successful Screenwriting.
The Nutshell Technique is considered the go-to manual many professionals swear by. It’s on the syllabus at film schools all over the world and has been published in Mandarin Chinese, Korean, and Italian, and in audiobook format.
As a script consultant, Jill has fixed and fine tuned scripts for Oscar-nominated screenwriters, top television showrunners, screenwriters whose movies have made over a billion dollars at the box office, award-winning independent filmmakers, and for many, many spec script writers.
In 2006, Jill founded The Screenplay Workshop with Jill Chamberlain (Screenplayworkshop.org) where she has personally taught thousands of screenwriters feature film and episodic television writing. Complete beginners to Emmy-winning screenwriters and award-winning producers enroll in her classes.
Find out more about her and her script consultancy at jillchamberlain.com.
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