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Imperial Library
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Index
Cover
Half Title
Dedication
Title Page
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction, or, Should I Save the Cat and Send the Hero on His Journey?
Chapter 1 The Science of Information Flow, or, I Say Schema, You Say Schemata: Top-Down versus Bottom-Up
Top-Down and Bottom-Up
I Say Schema, You Say Schemata
Frame versus Scene
Your Schema Is Not My Schemata
The Elusive 100 Percent Foolproof Movie Formula
What You Just Learned (or, Our Attempt to Load the Above Information into Your Brain’s Experience Structures, a Summary of Sorts)
Screenwriting Explorations: Clues and Constructivism at Work
Perceptual Prompts—Perspectives on Where Reality Is
Chapter 2 The Science of Connecting to the Main Character, or, Why Do I Worry That a Meth Dealer Might Get Caught?
What Life’s All About
Aristotle and Fear and Pity and Pfaff
Introduction of the Main Character: First Impressions Count
Introducing Jaak Panksepp
The Nonhero’s Journey
Learning from Others: Character Arc
The Science of Character Arc
What You Just Learned (or, Our Attempt to Load the Above Information into Your Brain’s Experience Structures, a Summary of Sorts)
Screenwriting Explorations: Empathy
Perceptual Prompts—Who Is the Bad Guy?
Chapter 3 The Science of Contrast, or, Why Did the Big Huge Spaceship Follow the Little Tiny Spaceship in the Opening of Star Wars?
A Little Science
Directing Attention
Aural Contrast
Narrative Contrast: Tension and Release
How Science Sees It, or, How to Avoid Narrative Exhaustion
Getting Emotional, or, How to Use the Word Valence in a Sentence about Screenwriting
The Return of Top-Down
What You Just Learned (or, Our Attempt to Load the above Information into Your Brain’s Experience Structures; a Summary of Sorts)
Screenwriting Explorations: Contrast and Atmosphere
Perceptual Prompts—Simultaneous Contrast
Chapter 4 The Science of Exposition, or, What’s Wrong with an Information Dump?
Constructivist Psychology to the Rescue
Ninotchka (1939)
Can I Become a Crafty Screenwriter Too?
The Science behind Otherworldly Worlds
What You Just Learned (or, Our Attempt to Load the Above Information into Your Brain’s Experience Structures, a Summary of Sorts)
Screenwriting Explorations: Exposition as a Game with the Audience
Perceptual Prompts—Where Is That Noise Coming from?
Chapter 5 The Science of Cause and Effect, or, Did the Packers Really Lose Because I Didn’t Wear My Cheesehead Hat?
The Science
Rewind: But The Social Network Is Told Out of Order
Causes with a Delayed Effect
The Science
What You Just Learned (or, Our Attempt to Load the Above Information into Your Brain’s Experience Structures, a Summary of Sorts)
Screenwriting Explorations: Cause and Effect
Perceptual Prompts—Being Closer Causes Being Bigger
Chapter 6 The Science of Shared Attention, or, If I Write a Screenplay in Which a Tree Falls in the Forest, and the Reader Falls Asleep Halfway Through, Have I Written a Screenplay?
The Science
Studies of Who’s Looking Where
How Filmmakers Handle Attention
The Role of Memory
The Challenge of Short Films
The Challenge of Virtual Reality
What You Just Learned (or, Our Attempt to Load the Above Information into Your Brain’s Experience Structures, a Summary of Sorts)
Screenwriting Explorations: Resetting Attention
Perceptual Prompts—Shared Attention Depends on How Well You Know the Speaker
Chapter 7 The Science of Conflict, or, What’s Wrong with Watching Two Hours of People Just Getting Along and Helping Each Other?
The Science of Conflict
Conflict Deep within Us
The Emotional Roller-Coaster
Verbal Conflict
Conflicted Human Nature
Dialogue: On the Nose and off the Rails
What You Just Learned (or, Our Attempt to Load the Above Information into Your Brain’s Experience Structures, a Summary of Sorts)
Screenwriting Explorations: Conflict on the Scene Level
Perceptual Prompts—Brain on Conflict, or the Missing Phoneme Effect
Chapter 8 The Science of Imagination: Temporal Lobes, How to Think Creatively, Stages of Mind, or, Your Dope-Fueled Imaginings
Preparation
Incubation
Aha! Moment
What You Just Learned (or, Our Attempt to Load the Above Information into Your Brain’s Experience Structures, a Summary of Sorts)
Screenwriting Explorations: There’s No Such Thing as Writer’s Block
Chapter 9 The Structure Question, or, How Many Acts Does It Take to Sell a Script?
Digging Deeper
Breaking Those Rules
Chapter 10 Star Wars, or, How George Did It
The Opening Crawl
Used Android Salesmen
The Main Character Appears
Connecting to Luke
The (Sand) People versus Ben Kenobi
Mos Eisley
The Journey
Out of the Millennium Falcon and into the Garbage Room
Escape from the Garbage Room
Contrivance: A Digression
Escape from the Death Star
Getting Ready
The Battle
Chapter 11 Epilogue, or, Go Forth and Create
References
Index
Copyright Page
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