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Desperate Housewives Storytelling Tips
Desperate Housewives ran for eight seasons from 2004 to 2012. This show is a great example of a ‘cozy mystery’. TAGLINES Taglines are for the marketing copy. Season One: Everyone has a little dirty laundry…/Secrets. Romance. Murder. All On One Street. THE LOGLINE/PREMISE For maximum narrative drive the premise should be all about the plot. […]
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Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015) Novel Study
Me And Earl And The Dying Girl is a metafictive coming-of-age film based on a young adult novel by the same name. The book is an example of ‘sick-lit‘. Greg […] is coasting through senior year of high school as anonymously as possible, avoiding social interactions like the plague while secretly making spirited, bizarre films […]
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Storytelling Tips From Kings Of Summer (2013)
Sometimes when you find out a story used to be called something different right up until the marketing team stepped in, the original name can offer extra insight. Kings of Summer was originally called “Toy’s House”. The main character is called Joe Toy, and I did spend a bit of time wondering if this is a symbolic […]
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The Edge Of Seventeen Film Study
The Edge of Seventeen is a coming-of-age movie about an American girl called Nadine who struggles to fit in. That could describe many of us in our teen years, but with Nadine there’s a bit more to it. STORY STRUCTURE OF THE EDGE OF SEVENTEEN The film opens to a witty, high stakes dialogue scene […]
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Adventureland Storytelling Techniques
Adventureland is a 2009 coming-of-age movie written and directed by Greg MottolaIn. In the summer of 1987, a college graduate takes a ‘nowhere’ job at his local amusement park, only to find it’s the perfect course to get him prepared for the real world.
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Cowboys, Westerns and Lonesome Dove
Here’s the premise of Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove: Two Texas Rangers decide to move cattle from the south to Montana running into many problems along the way. CONTROLLING IDEA Detail a legendary journey while including the harsh realities of Wild-Western life to show that the ‘legends’ of the Wild West were ordinary men working in […]
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Wolf Hollow by Lauren Wolk Novel Study
Wolf Hollow (2016) is a middle grade novel by Lauren Wolk. This mid-20th century story is chock-full of symbolism which makes it great for a novel study. Here I focus instead on the writing techniques, for writers of middle grade. Though moons tend to be massive in children’s books, the moon on this cover would […]
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The Snail Under The Leaf Setting
In many folktales, visitors to fairyland see magnificent palaces and comely people until they accidentally rub the fairy ointment on their eyes. Then fairyland is revealed as a charnel-house, grey and grim, with the fairies as the grinning dead. Diane Purkiss, Troublesome Things The Utopian World is prevalent in contemporary children’s literature. Move into young […]
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The Amazing Bone by William Steig Analysis
Last year marked the 40th anniversary of William Steig’s The Amazing Bone. This is remarkable because it feels, in some ways, like a much more modern picture book than that. This is all to do with Steig’s voice. Pearl is at no point mortally afraid. We know and she knows that this is a storybook world in […]
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Serena (2014) Film Study
Serena is an example of a film in which the production values and acting talent far exceed the final product. Serena’s obvious symbolism and on-the-nose dialogue make for a film that’s narratively sub-par, but for students of storytelling it’s an interesting case study. The name ‘Serena’ is meaningful — although the character comports herself serenely in public and […]
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The Great Fusilli Courage The Cowardly Dog
STORY STRUCTURE OF THE GREAT FUSILLI The Great Fusilli is the last Courage story of season one and it is fitting that the creators have made a work of metafiction — in other words, the audience is reminded that they are watching a TV show. WEAKNESS/NEED Courage: That it’s up to him to save the […]
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Little Muriel Courage The Cowardly Dog
Often in stories with a very small character there is some metaphorical/thematic reason for it, but in this case Muriel’s regression to the body and mind of a 3 and a half year old is pure fun. In other words, this is a carnivalesque story.
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The Snowman Cometh Courage The Cowardly Dog
In The Snowman Cometh episode of Courage is interesting for the way in which the writers comically represent a part of science which is difficult to understand and even harder to portray on screen. SETTING Most of the Courage episodes are set in the Bagge family home in the middle of Nowhere but by this […]
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Heads Of Beef Courage The Cowardly Dog
“Heads Of Beef” is an episode of Nickelodeon cartoon show from the late 1990s, Courage The Cowardly Dog. In any horror comedy starring a dog, surely at some point the dog must find himself a hot dog, right? The trope of the surprise in the burger plays on a primal fear we have when visiting […]
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The Hunchback Of Nowhere Courage The Cowardly Dog
“The Hunchback of Nowhere” is an episode from the first season of Courage The Cowardly Dog. As ever, this modern re-visioning takes inspiration from a wide history of storytelling, including from The Bible. Any adult viewer will know immediately that this is inspired at least partly by The Hunchback of Notre Dame, though the writers can’t […]
