[Watch the video interview on YouTube here]
Film Courage: Why is it important for a writer to know the ending of their story before they begin pages?
Andrew Zinnes, Author/Senior Teaching Fellow/Script Doctor: Right. Most of the people that we interviewed in our book that we wrote [Screenwriter’s Advice by Andrew Zinnes and Genevieve Jolliffe] almost all those pro writers, all 34 down to a T said that was important.
I think you just need to know where you’re going. It’s a whole thing, a story. Everything that you’ve set up in act one or at the beginning needs to come to a crescendo at the climax and wrap up at the end.
I think if you don’t know where you’re going, it’s very easy to get lost along the way. You might follow tangents of story threads that don’t take you there to where you want to go.
Now sometimes that might be good because that as I said before that might be nuances that you didn’t explore before but generally speaking once you have a sense of the world once what’s in that world and you know what you want to say, what potential endings are, where it’s possible ways of where that story is going to go, okay there might be multiple choices.
Maybe you choose the more obscure of them but it’s still authentic and once you have that point in story time then you can work backwards from there.
The end of act two might be that because that would then the character gets off their feet and they go towards that point and then you’re working backwards to the midpoint and you work backwards to act one the journey start the end of the beginning of act two where the journey starts it gets you to that point and then you can go back into act one where you set up the world that is different that you start…(Watch the video interview on YouTube here).
BUY THE BOOK – SCREENWRITERS ADVICE:
From Popular and Award Winning Film, TV, and Streaming Shows (The Guerilla Filmmaker’s Handbooks)
BUY THE BOOK – THE DOCUMENTARY FILM MAKERS HANDBOOK:
A Guerilla Guide
BUY THE BOOK – THE GUERILLA FILM MAKERS POCKETBOOK:
The Ultimate Guide to Digital Film Making (The Guerilla Filmmaker’s Handbooks) –
About:
Andrew Zinnes is Senior Teaching Fellow at the University of Portsmouth, UK. He has worked in development at Paramount Pictures and at USA Networks. He left to become a script analyst, and worked for Morgan Creek Productions, Artisan and several script analyst companies. Using his documentary filmmaking experience, Andrew was the perfect co-author for The Documentary Film Makers Handbook. He has taught documentary at the NY Film Academy and has lectured on filmmaking at schools and colleges around the US. He is a founding partner of the film company Crazee Pictures.
CONNECT WITH ANDREW ZINNES
Advertisement – contains affiliate links:
More affiliates:
Camera we use for interviews – https://buff.ly/3rWqrra
Sound we use for interviews – https://amzn.to/2tbFlM9
Other books on Amazon that Film Courage recommends – https://buff.ly/3o0oE5o
