All posts by James Napoli
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First Draft: Sure, Story Structure Guides Are Useful. But When Should We Be Using Them, and How?
In partnership with Creative Screenwriting and ScreenCraft, “First Draft” is a series on everything to do with screenwriting. “It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take...
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First Draft: Understanding the Promise of the Premise Through Nocturnal Animals, Groundhog Day and Black Mirror
In partnership with Creative Screenwriting and ScreenCraft, “First Draft” is a series on everything to do with screenwriting. Save the Cat practitioners will be familiar with the phrase...
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First Draft: Living In the Past With Flashbacks and Monologues
In partnership with Creative Screenwriting and ScreenCraft, “First Draft” is a series on everything to do with screenwriting. Flashbacks Nothing provokes a more knee-jerk “don’t do it” reaction...
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First Draft: Knowing the Difference Between Fact and Truth When Adapting a True Story
In partnership with Creative Screenwriting and ScreenCraft, “First Draft” is a series on everything to do with screenwriting. Taking the 1994 film Quiz Show as a case study, let’s explore...
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First Draft: Know Your Place, Write Better Single Locations
In partnership with Creative Screenwriting and ScreenCraft, “First Draft” is a series on everything to do with screenwriting. Every screenplay should be set somewhere. Forget that maybe you’ll...
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First Draft: Hone Your Skills in Storytelling Efficiency With Groundhog Day
In partnership with Creative Screenwriting and ScreenCraft, “First Draft” is a series on everything to do with screenwriting. There are many screenplays available online, but one in particular...
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First Draft: When Is It OK For Your Script to Use On-the-Nose Dialogue?
In partnership with Creative Screenwriting and ScreenCraft, we’re publishing “First Draft,” a series on everything to do with screenwriting. Near the end of Richard Wenk’s screenplay for 16 Blocks (which...
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First Draft: Lessons in Screenplay Plants and Payoffs from Chinatown and The Orphanage
In partnership with Creative Screenwriting and ScreenCraft, “First Draft” is a series on everything to do with screenwriting. “Bad for glass,” says private eye Jake Gittes in Robert Towne’s...
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First Draft: Is it Surprise, or is it Suspense?
In partnership with Creative Screenwriting and ScreenCraft, “First Draft” is a series on everything to do with screenwriting. I had an interesting experience while binge-watching the first two...
Summer 2019
Spring 2019
Winter 2019
Guide 2019
Summer 2018
Year in MovieMaker
Inside the Issue: Acting
Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker: Richard Dreyfuss
American Graffiti, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Stand By Me, Mr. Holland’s Opus… even while reading like a what’s what of cinema, those titles are just a handful...
1Inside the Issue: Directing
Cold Piece of Work: Richard Linklater Braves Greenland Hurricanes for Where’d You Go, Bernadette
Richard Linklater’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette opens with the answer to its titular question. In an impressively executed overhead shot, the camera gazes down onto placid Antarctic waters as...
Inside the Issue: How To
How They Did It: The Farewell Writer-Director Lulu Wang Shares Secrets to Turning Your Life Story into a Memoir Movie
The week before production started on The Farewell—my sophomore feature about a young woman (Billi, played by Awkwafina) and her family’s attempts to keep their grandmother’s cancer diagnosis hidden...