Developing Story Ideas, 3rd Edition

21 Feature Film

Everyone dreams of hitting the jackpot by writing a successful feature screenplay, but even in barest outline it’s a big undertaking. Keeping an audience enthralled for ninety minutes will eventually take richly detailed characters, and a plot with a plethora of events and subplots. Themes have to develop, connect, and achieve a depth of meaning. Writing a complete, finished feature screenplay takes nearly the effort, narrative material, and planning that it takes to write a novel.

We shall only go to the foot of the mountain, but to make an initial outline is still significant and exciting. Where the thirty-minute fiction assignment asked you to explore the experience of one character, this asks that you:

• Depict the quests and ...