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Screen Story Writers Course:

Lesson TWO:

Film Analysis (Kramer vs Kramer)

Assembling Story Points
The Aim of Story for Your Audience
Genre
Logline
Accessing Your Dream World

By Michael Domeyko Rowland

This training manual is a part of the screen storywriter

course entitled Super Conscious Writing. It may not be
duplicated nor transferred electronically or by any other
means without the written permission of the author.

Self Communications Pty. Ltd. 2008

www.screenstorywriter.com

Film analysis (Kramer versus Kramer)

Kramer versus Kramer is one of the most successful films ever made. It gathered
five Oscars including Best film, Best Director, Best Script (from the book by Avery
Corman) and Best actor for Dustin Hoffman and best supporting actress for Meryl
Streep.
When you watch it today, you can see that it is in fact a very simple story indeed.
Dustin Hoffman plays an advertising executive who is a workaholic and ignores his
wife and young son.
Meryl Streep plays his wife, a woman under psychological pressure who finds being
in the family too much for her, and leaves both Dustin and their son and goes to
California.
The central story of the film is for Dustins character to confront the realities of
being a single father, something he has never done before.
It is certainly worth watching, as it shows you how to really construct a story that
appeals to a sophisticated audience. It also appealed to a mass audience.
The theme that the writer/director, Robert Benton used for the film was about
being a father. In the beginning Dustins character is not being a good father and
he is seen gossiping at the office, rather than being at home, where Meryl is
struggling with herself, and has decided to leave him.
Because he is so self obsessed with his work, he has been unable to see the state
of Meryls mind and has been unable to hear her pleas for help. You get the sense,
throughout the film, that Meryls character is actually suffering from a psychological
issue.
I wont spoil the ending of the film for you, because it is worth getting out on DVD
and really examining it carefully. You will learn a great deal about precision in your
writing.
From a story structure point of view, the film is almost flawless. The theme
resonates through every single scene. And this is the great secret for your theme.
Every beat, every scene, every sequence must express the theme of your story.
In this way you hold the audiences attention because you are discussing the core
of the story in every frame.
So, taking the theme of Kramer versus Kramer to be fatherhood, there is not a
single scene in the film that does not express, or examine, this theme.
For instance every scene where Dustin is in the office, or out in the city, or just
away from home with other characters, are all about fatherhood, and his issue with
it.

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Had the writer made the error of putting in a scene that was not to do with
fatherhood, or even a few lines, it would have broken the holding power of the film.
For instance, if we had seen Dustin at his office coming up with a new advertising
line for a product, that was perhaps a very funny line, or some conflict or other
dramatic situation about something that was happening in the office, but had not
relevance to the theme of fatherhood, then that would have shattered the hold of
the film over the audience.
Regardless of how good that scene might have been, it would still have broken the
ability of the story to retain the attention of the audience, and would have allowed
their minds to be taken away. It would have broken the trance that allows the film
to have its effect of emotional satisfaction.
This is why people fail in their story writing. Firstly, they rarely have a theme, or if
so, it has not been thought out properly.
Secondly, if they do have one, they often divert away from it, because they have
some pet scene or idea that they feel is very funny, or powerful, or interesting in
some way. They havent understood that as soon as you break from your theme,
you break from the audience.
If you take the human body as an analogy for a story, premise is the spine, the
backbone, on which the whole story is based. The premise is a moral position, or
point of view that the writer is taking.
Theme, in our analogy of story as a human body, is the heart. It is that which
constantly pumps and beats throughout the whole story. So it is the single value or
quality around which the whole story operates. All scenes have as their basis this
thematic value.
So, let us say you choose a story about a man who is passionate about making
money, and this passion is an unfettered desire to make hundreds of millions of
dollars from the investment fund he runs. Nothing else matters to him except the
accumulation of money, and he has no morals about it. He will cheat and steal if he
has to.
Now the theme in this story could be Greed. You can see how this is the heartbeat
of the story, because it is obviously a story about greed. Every scene would have
greed as its underlying pulse.
Perhaps he starts as a man who rejects greed, but when the opportunity for huge
monies becomes available if he cheats, he cannot control himself and he embraces
greed. At the end, he is caught by the authorities and goes to jail, and he has the
opportunity to give up his greed to become a better person.
The film Wall Street, exhibits this kind of story, and if you examine it, you can see
in almost every scene that the theme of greed is played out. Whether we are at the
home of the lead character, played by Michael Douglas, or in the scenes where
Charlie Sheen, plays the young man drawn into the web of greed, or at the stock
broking office where Charlie works, or whether it is the character played by Martin

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Sheen, every scene revolves around greed, or is a comment or observation about
greed. This is why it is such a powerful film and won an Oscar for Michael Douglas.
So this is why it is utterly essential to be completely clear of what your theme is
going to be, because your theme is the heartbeat of your story on which everything
else acts.
The theme of course is closely interlocked with the premise as we have already
seen.
Lets look at a possible premise of Wall Street, which links together with the theme:
Passion without integrity leads to disaster.
So the premise reveals that the character is a man with passion and without
integrity. The leads to shows the events which cause him to lose all his money and
his job and end up with a long jail sentence, which is the disaster.
As in all good stories, the whole film is encapsulated in the premise.
Assembling Story Points
So, having decided upon your premise and your theme, your next action is to
assemble any story ideas that will be useful to you.
This is an ongoing process that you need to be doing all the time. A writer always
carries a notebook and pen, or a voice recorder, so they can jot down on the run all
the little points, ideas, lines and images that pop into their consciousness all
through the day.
These little sparks are intensely useful. You may keep them for 10 or 20 years, and
then suddenly they become appropriate for a particular story. You will build up
many snippets all the time, and they become your gold mine, that you can quarry
at any point you like.
It is also often very useful just to read through these files of ideas, because often
they will give you a solution to a story issue you might be facing difficulty with.
Probably the best source of ideas that are truly original and unique, will come from
your dream world. Later in this lesson we will examine the ways that you can
become conscious of your dreams, and access your dreams for new ideas.
The dream world is the door to your super conscious mind. It is an excellent place
to begin, and, as we proceed with the course, you will learn how to access this
inner world consciously and deliberately.
The Aim of Story for Your Audience
As we discussed in the first lesson, the purpose of story is to cause an emotional
response in your audience. Whether this is a book or a film, it is the essential and
unavoidable requirement.

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People divide themselves into particular groups. And these groups respond in
particular ways to particular stimulations.
So, when you are considering what type of story to tell, your first thought should
be what type of audience am I aiming for.
Sometimes it may be something as simple as a mass audience. These are the
blockbuster films and books. You need to decide if you are looking for a wide mass
audience, or are you aiming for a small clique, or a specialist audience.
Sometimes it may be a story of literary value. Some people are very highbrow
while others prefer more popular fare. The highbrow audience are obviously much
smaller than those who enjoy popular entertainment.
Some people prefer hard gritty material, while others prefer softer stories.
Books and films that are appropriate to children are not necessarily appropriate for
adults.
When you are writing a story, whether it is for a film or for the page, you are
supplying an experience for a particular type of person. And, in the same way that
you would not offer an old-age pensioner a bungee jumping holiday, or a 40 km
hike in the mountains, your story also needs to be particularly directed.
Many people write stories and just hope they will find an audience. Sometimes they
do, but mostly they dont.
A professional writer knows exactly who they are writing for. So you consider very
carefully who would be interested in your kind of story. Perhaps the easiest way to
do this is to examine similar material to the type you want to write, and see who it
is that buys this material.
Once you have defined your audience you move to the next more specific definition
of your story.
This is called Genre.
Can you see now how you are very carefully building from the ground up your
story? Perhaps you can also see why architecture is the closest craft to writing
books and films.
Genre
Film producers and book publishers only buy Genres. Genres are the definitions you
see in your video or book shop such as Action, Crime, Romantic Comedy, Thriller,
Drama, Horror and so on. It is essential you know what each genre requires and
which genre you would like to write in with your stories. They have very strict rules.

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Many people are frightened of writing in particular genres. This is because they
fear that their work will become formula. But genres are only ways of identifying
particular groups of the audience.
Genres such as film noir, romantic comedy or teen horror all have specific
definitions and steps that the audience expect to see.
Because there have been so many films in each single genre, the danger is that
they become so familiar and predictable, that they cease to be entertaining.
Even so, particularly in the young teenage audience, who may not have seen as
many films as adults, the formula can be rolled out with minor variations, and still
be successful.
Because of this, what happens today more and more, is that writers and producers
like to mix their genres. So you might have a vampire love story. Or you may mix
comedy with a thriller, such as Beverley Hills Cop and its progeny. Or, a monster
horror story with a detective genre.
Perhaps one of the richest genres to mine is science fiction. This is because you can
create totally unique worlds that have never been seen before by the audience.
It is also possible, in any genre whatsoever, to have your own premise or theme fit
into a particular story. So if you carried your theme of greed, you could place it a
horror film, or a comedy, or a thriller.
You will find the appropriate story that allows you to express your premise and
theme to the best possible advantage
The majority of people obviously go to the cinema or read a book, in order to
receive a strong emotional experience that gives them energy. This is the kind of
story where the hero overcomes the obstacles and has a happy or fulfilled ending.
These types are the most popular films and the most popular genres.
All the problems are resolved, and there is an experience for the audience on
everything having been completed. This allows the audience to also feel they have
had a satisfying experience. It is these kinds of films that generate the largest
amount of money.
But, as soon as you avoid these kinds of stories, the audience numbers diminish,
and in some cases very dramatically.
So, if you create a story which has a negative ending, or there are many loose ends
unresolved, leaving the sense of an unfinished or uncompleted experience, then the
majority of your audience will not enjoy the film or book, simply because they have
come to have a full and emotionally satisfying experience and they did not get it.
So they will probably bad mouth your story.

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The easier it is to understand the story, the larger your audience will be. The
masses of people like the very straightforward kind of plot we see in Star Wars, or
Raiders of the lost Ark, or Jaws, or Titanic in the film industry, and all the novels
you see at the airports that sell tens of millions of copies.
What this means is a hero who wants something specific, and a villain who tries to
stop the hero getting it.
Let us now look at the main genres, which have always held audiences attention.
The Bible was the original source of stories in the western world. It has been read
for the last 2000 years, and is still running strongly. Many people have made films
based on biblical stories, and just as many create up-to-date themes and premises
of those stories and use them in a modern setting.
Today, the film industry, with rare exceptions such as The Passion by Mel Gibson,
hesitates to tell biblical stories. And yet if you look back a few decades you can see
the great success of films such as The Ten Commandments, and other ancient
style genres, such as Spartacus, that were basically spin-offs from biblical stories.
There is now, thanks to the book and the film, The Da Vinci code, a large demand
for biblical style stories. This is a rich vein of opportunity for writers who have
interests in these fields.
Following on the heels of the Bible stories was the extremely popular genre called
The Western. This was the original genre on which the film business was based, as
well as the mass marketing of books telling about cowboys in America.
The Western evolved into the cop story. This was brilliantly exemplified by Clint
Eastwood in his Dirty Harry series. Eastwoods earlier films were all westerns, and
he made his name as a gigantic star in those cowboy shootout films. He then went
on and made himself an even bigger star in the rogue cop stories.
The Western has certainly faded in the last couple of decades, but the cop and
detective stories are still immensely popular.
People have always been interested in the Crime Genre, and it is a genre that can
hold your attention with its suspense, as well as murder, which for some reason
fascinates people in general. If you examine television, you find that crime is the
main genre that they make TV drama shows about.
Another that has stayed popular in recent years is the war genre.
Whenever, and wherever men exist, there always seems to be war. You will also
always find a war story somewhere on the screens or in the bookshops. It is a very
rich area where you can express any themes you desire.
And another long-term genre, that is always successful when done properly, is the
horror story. Just look at the number of Dracula pictures that have been made, and
continue to be made.

They still follow the same steps, which are those people expect if you are writing a
Dracula picture.

If you tie the thriller genre in with its cousin the action genre, then you have the
vast majority of films that are made and books that are written. They are
consistently popular with audiences, which is why they continue to be made.
James Bond, the Bourne Identity, Spiderman, Batman, Superman, Star Wars and
all others have at their basis the action thriller plot. Naturally they have other
genres linked in with the stories, such as science fiction in Star Wars, the spy genre
of the James Bond, and the superhero genre of Spiderman, Batman and Superman.
There is also the comedy genre. If you get comedy right, you can retire and live a
life of luxury for the rest of your life.
The musical is another genre. It of course mixes genres depending on its type.
Musicals can be extremely popular, but they still must fulfil the same requirements
of the dramatic story, in other words still have their theme, premise, plots and
characters as the story structure demands. Just stringing a few songs together will
not work.
The genre of the love story has always been, and will always be, popular. This of
course is because people are always looking for love. You can aim your love story in
many ways and mix it with other genres. You could have a detective love story that
was seen in the film Sea of Love with Al Pacino.
Many years ago a film was made called Love story, with Ryan ONeal and Ali
McGraw. It was about a young man in love with his girlfriend, who was dying of
cancer. It was a weepy kind of story that became enormously successful as both a
book and the film.
If you mix comedy with a love story, you have the genre called romantic comedy,
or Rom Com as it is known in Hollywood. This is an immensely popular genre and
if you can write a story well in this field, then it will have publishers and producers
falling over themselves to sign you up.
There is a genre called the historical genre. These are stories set in the past, with
different costumes and behaviours and ways of life that are unfamiliar to us today.
Now the vital thing about a historical genre story, is that if these stories are to work
they must be about contemporary issues, rather than be a history lesson. Just
because they are set in the past does not mean that you play them as past stories.
It is very important that the characters and the events reflect something in
present-day society. When people go to a historical film, they are looking for a
contemporary story in a different setting. This is why many historical films do not
work. Writers and producers have created a story that is an accurate representation
of what went on some hundreds of years ago. Audiences find this boring.
The reason many people write historical stories, is because they can say things in
those stories that may not be appropriate to say in todays world.

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In other words they have much more freedom to make comments on present day
society and contemporary issues than they would have if they set the story in
todays world.
Another very popular genre is drama. These are often referred to as character
pieces, which are not so much involved in the traditional suspense, crime, action,
thriller or horror.
Most of the Oscar-winning films, and Booker prize-winning books are of the drama
genre. People love to know about people. There is an endless fascination for seeing
other people go through their dramatic situations in their lives.
There is also another genre called family. These are films that the whole family can
watch or read and enjoy together. Sometimes these can be tremendously
successful.
Before films, TV and radio came along, families would often read stories together,
and most writers would satisfy those demands by choosing genres that were
popular with the whole family.
You only have to look back in time and read the books of say Charles Dickens, such
as Oliver Twist, or Edgar Rice Burroughs books on Tarzan and the writings of HG
Wells and Jules Verne.
Then there is also the fantasy genre, the social drama, erotica and of course the
whole range of childrens stories, as well as many sub genres.
So you can see a genre is a particular view of life. It has its own world, it has its
own values, and the specific steps that must be followed if the audience is to have
a fulfilling experience.
It is a good idea to spend an hour or two at a large video store, and examine all the
different genres there are. Do the same at one of the large bookstores. You will
then get the idea of the audience sizes for each of the genres. The more DVDs or
books there are on the shelves in a particular genre, the more there is of an
audience for that particular genre.
The best way to study genre steps is to get out the top ten books or DVDs and
examine them closely, making notes of anything that is consistent in them. It could
be the characters, the settings, the symbols or props, lines of dialogue, locations
and so on.
I remember reading about Steven Spielberg. When he was asked how did he
understand filmmaking, he said that when he was young he would study the works
of the greatest directors who were around. People like John Ford and Alfred
Hitchcock.
He said he would watch their films 40, 50 or even 60 times each. Sometimes with
the sound off, sometimes stopping after each scene, sometimes in slow motion,

sometimes with his eyes closed just listening to the music and soundtrack and in
any way he could.

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He said that after watching these films that many times, something jumped out of
the screen at him. He found he understood the film at a very profound level and
once he had done this with a number of films he understood film directing, as can
be seen by his tremendous success.
Many great book writers have done the same thing, by reading all the novels of
their favourite writers.
Your question now might be what genre should I write in? The best genre to write
in is usually the genre that you like to read, or watch at the movies. When you are
walking along the shelves of your video store, if you always stop at the action
picture section and choose something there, then obviously this is your favourite.
Many writers make the mistake of writing from a position of what their friends
might think about them. They may love action and thriller pictures or books, but
their peer group are intellectuals, and so they feel that they should write something
of an intellectual nature in order to be accepted by their peer group.
When you begin to write, if you havent written before, it is a great idea to start by
writing something that has the opportunity of being commercially successful.
The reason for this is because it will be much easier to get it published or made into
a film. At a later date, once you have mastered your craft, you can write whatever
you like.
I knew a man years ago who decided he wanted to be a TV writer. A very popular
television show had been on for several years. He decided he wanted to write for it
as that particular show paid very good money for their scripts.
So he made a point of watching some episodes from the very first year of the show.
He then rewrote these episodes, without changing very much at all, masking them
enough so it wasnt obvious what he was doing.
He then sent the scripts to the production company and they were immediately
purchased. He then became a regular writer on the show.
With television, and Im sure youre aware of this, it is basically retelling the same
stories over, and over, and over again. I have known many television writers and
producers in my time, and have worked as a director of television series. I can
assure you that that is the case.
I remember the regular writer, on a show called Spyforce about World War two,
told me he would read a war adventure novel, and from that novel he would pull
out five to ten script story ideas, which he would then use for the show.
He would then rewrite these and they were all filmed. Television is a medium where
many people can easily earn a living.

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One of the advantages of writing with knowledge of genre, is that you can write
much faster than you can without knowing about how it works. Once youve
examined the genre you are writing in, it does not take much work to write your
own story and add your own flavour and twists and turns, to make it an original
work.
Lets move on to the next step. This will show you how to cull down your story
ideas into a simple form which gives the core of what you want to tell.
Logline
Once you have your premise in place, and you have decided on your genre, the
next step is to sum up the idea of your story in a line or two.
This is called a logline.
The logline basically defines your story. You can send your logline to a producer or
a book publisher, if you were writing a query letter to see if they were interested in
your type of work.
Logline is the little summation of the film that you read in your television guides.
You know the kind of thing:
The Dirty Dozen: A group of convicts are released from jail and given the task of
killing a group of Nazi generals behind enemy lines, in a mission with no possibility
of escape.
Jurassic Park: A scientist has recreated dinosaurs and put them in a theme park,
but they escape and try to devour his family.
ET: A boy discovers a friendly alien and has to help him return home before he is
captured by scientists.
Or, you can make one up:
A family lost in the wilderness, when their car breaks down, have to find their way
back to civilisation through a pack of hungry grizzly bears.
Or,
A young woman, climbing the corporate ladder, is faced with compromising her
morals in order to get the top job.
Now a producer or publisher will read this logline. On the basis of this they will
often call for the script or manuscript to read. The logline has to be something very
juicy and attractive to get their attention.
Imagine yourself in the position of a producer or publisher who receives many
submissions each week. If the logline or synopsis of the story does not grab him or
her immediately on reading it, then they give it what is called a pass. This is
basically a no thank you letter, if they bother to write to you at all.

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People always make their decisions on which films to reject, and which films to
consider, based on the contents of the logline.
So it is really important to be able to sum up your story in a sentence or two.
The way to gain this skill is to read many of the film outlines in your TV guide.
There are also many books which describe movies that you can buy. Read them as
many times as you can, until you get a sense of what it is that causes people to
become interested in watching a particular film.
This also works perfectly for discovering your loglines for novels. It is also good if
you have to make a speech, as each speech can be condensed into a logline.
Once you have understood the format of these loglines, you can then start to write
your own to describe the work you are considering doing.
You can also just make up some, even if you have no intention of writing those
particular stories.
Then it is a good idea to try these out on friends to see their reaction when you tell
them each one. Do they understand the story from what you are saying?
The logline is the seed in your story. It will show you whether it can grow into a
tree or a full story or not.
It is a very good discipline to bring the whole of your story idea down to the
simplest possible sentence. It will help you dismiss ideas that do not work, and it
does this by showing you that they cannot be communicated successfully in a
simple way.
Perhaps the most important part of all loglines, is the inclusion of a description of
the lead character.
Lets look at the difference between a logline without a description of the lead
character and one with.
A man is caught on a plane that has been hijacked, and he must kill the hijackers if
he is to rescue his family.
That is a very descriptive summation of the story and could very well attract an
audience. But lets say we add to that a little bit more, by adding a description of
the hero.
A gentle man, with little self-confidence, is caught on a plane that has been
hijacked by terrorists, and he must kill the hijackers if he is to rescue his family.
Now that sounds a little bit more interesting because we have a man who has to
confront his own fears.
Now lets add a description of the villain.

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A gentle man, with little self-confidence, is caught on a plane that has been
hijacked by violent and ruthless terrorists, and he must kill the hijackers if he is to
rescue his family.
Now we know the terrorists are violent and ruthless, so this adds to the strength of
the log line.
So you can see how necessary it is to make your logline as interesting and
attractive as possible. You do this by ensuring that each element has its descriptive
adjectives.
Now, it is very possible that as you start to build your story, there will be changes,
perhaps only slight, to your logline and your premise. It is even possible that a
better and more accurate description of your theme will appear in your mind as you
start to build your story.
It is very important to always keep in mind that you are in a creative process, and
that things can change.
What you will find, is that it is crucially important to put your work into the
discovery of your theme, premise, genre and logline before you get anywhere near
the actual writing of your story or screenplay.
As I have mentioned before, many people make the mistake with their writing of
just starting to write. The one exception to this is those who write directly from the
superconscious mind.
These are usually people who are highly experienced, or have been given a natural
gift of accessing the deeper mind. But for most others, particularly if youre a
screenwriter, it is essential to follow these steps when youre in the process of
learning how to write. In this way you have a better chance of bringing income
from the sale of your work.
Next, we will look into how you can begin to access the source of all great stories
which live within the deeper part of your mind called the Mythopoetica.
It is from here that your dreams arise, as well as all great stories. So we will start
by showing you how to open up that resource by firstly remembering your dreams,
and secondly learning how to be conscious that you are dreaming while you are
dreaming.
Accessing the Dream World
To access your dream world is a very useful exercise to contact, and open to, your
superconscious.
It is very useful to keep snippets of dreams for your stories, as these are the first
glimpses into your superconscious mind.
I will give you now a technique to help you to remember your dreams.

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First of all have a notebook and pen, or a voice activated audio recorder, on a table
next to your bed.
When you lie down to go to sleep at night, tap your head lightly on your pillow
three times (make sure its your pillow not the wall behind your bed), and each
time you tap, you say to yourself: I will remember my dreams, tap, I will
remember my dreams, tap, I will remember my dreams, tap. Then just go to
sleep.
Then, when you wake up in the morning, whatever is the first thing that you
become aware of, whether it is a snippet of a dream, or a whole dream, or a
feeling, or sense of something, perhaps an old memory, rerun it through your
mind. Then, whatever it might be, just write it down, or record it onto the audio
device.
The key to doing this is not to move at all when you awaken. Because if you move,
you will often lose the dream. So before you move, to write, just rerun through
your mind whatever it is you have just glimpsed or remembered.
Then moving as little as you can, reach for the voice-activated recorder, or the
notebook and pen, and write down or record everything that you can remember.
If you do this every day, you will find that, after a week or two, you will become
very good at remembering your dreams. I have taught this technique to people
who had never dreamt in their life, or so they think. Because we all dream every
night, you cant avoid it. But we may not remember them. But these people have
found that within five days at the most of doing this head tapping technique, they
start to have very vivid dreams, which they can easily remember.
This way of accessing the more creative parts of your mind will not only give you
lots of ideas and even scenes for films or stories, but will also train you to develop
the ability to access the superconscious mind at will.
The second aspect of remembering your dreams is even more useful. Once you
have found, after say four weeks or so, that you can remember your dreams, you
can then try to develop what is called lucid dreaming. This means you are conscious
that you are dreaming while you are dreaming.
How this works is that as you lay in your bed, just before going to sleep, this time
you tap your head again lightly on the pillow three times, and each time you tap
your head, you say to yourself, When I see a billiard ball in my dreams, I will be
aware I am dreaming, tap; When I see a billiard ball in my dreams, I will be aware
that Im dreaming, tap; When I see a billiard ball in my dreams, I will be aware I
am dreaming, tap.
Now what will happen this time, and it may take several days, or even weeks to
work, but usually it is quite quick, you will find that you will come awake in a
dream.

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Perhaps, in a dream, youre being chased by a lion, and, as you are running
through the forest, with the lion chasing you, you look down on the floor of the
forest and you see a billiard ball.
At that point your mind, your consciousness comes in and you remember. Theres a
billiard ball, I must be dreaming. Usually the first few times this happens you wake
up in excitement saying to yourself I was dreaming and I remembered I was
dreaming.
But after a few of times of doing this, one day you will come awake in the dream.
In other words you will be conscious that you are dreaming while you are
dreaming, You may turn round and face the lion, or you may consciously and
deliberately climb a tree, or fly off a cliff, or whatever else at the time seems
appropriate in your dream.
This is an excellent way for you to begin to start to access what we call the
superconscious mind.
The reason that it is useful to develop the ability of remembering and becoming
conscious in your dreams, is that filmmaking is a dream making industry. When
people go to the cinema, which is a large darkened hall with one wall of light, their
attention is immediately drawn to the screen.
What they see on the screen is very similar to the experience of being in an actual
dream. If the story is well told, then this is a fascinating and totally absorbing
experience for every human being.
Novels also act in the same way, in that description in the story draws people to
create for themselves an inner world of imagination.
But it is really the cinema that has the most potential to draw a person into the
dream like state, because it is such an all-absorbing experience, and the energy of
the whole audience actually adds to the quality of the experience.
It is also well known that in our nightly dream world, we experience a whole variety
of emotions. From deep terror to ecstatic bliss, and everything in between, all
emotions are given a workout at night.
These night time emotions are just as vivid, as if the real experience was taking
place. So that while you are being chased by a lion in the dream, you will feel the
terror and panic and you may even wake up actually sweating.
The mind is unable to differentiate between an imagined experience and a real one.
This is the same in the cinema, in the sense that if the story is properly told with
the correct structural components and other elements, then the mind cannot
differentiate between what is real and what is imagined, and the body is
unavoidably drawn into the emotional experience that the film has been designed
to create.

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When people have a strong emotional experience in the cinema, then some sort
of catharsis takes place, which is very releasing, and healing and even inspiring for
each member of the audience.
Because once you have had that releasing emotional experience in the movies,
then more energy is freed up for you and the better and stronger you feel.
A dream is a fully experienced story. All the characters, with their behaviours and
actions appear. It is one of the most creative experiences you can have and the
closest thing to a perfect movie you will ever experience.
Study your dreams, as they will give you all sorts of ideas as well as being a portal
to your superconscious mind and will help you to enter this realm consciously.
Exercises
1. Start the habit of collecting ideas, images, thoughts, snippets of dialogue,
newspaper cuttings, character descriptions, extraordinary events and all other
types of data, as it will become useful for you in your writing.
Even if you keep these in a random way such as just in a folder, and then read
them at a later date, they will really be a pot of gold for you. Many writers report of
using these little gems sometimes 20 years after they collect them. So never throw
them away.
2. Decide upon your audience. Whether you are writing a film or a book, you need
to know who it is that you are creating the work for. Really give this careful
consideration. What types of people would be interested in what you are doing? Is
it a broad audience or a small one?
3. Make a study of genre, even those you are not particularly interested in. It is
very important to be able to do this. Perhaps choose 10 genres and examine the
most successful handful of films in each genre and watch them carefully.
See what kind of consistent story points go through each one. For instance, in
Dracula films the Count must not face the sunshine or he will melt away. And it is
known that a crucifix must be hammered through his chest in order to kill him.
Each genre has its consistent elements, and it is important that you know what
these are. The only way you can do this is by examining the films and stories for
yourself.
A good practice therefore would be to choose your favourite genre and then write
out the consistent story elements for yourself. It is a very interesting exercise to
fulfil, because it makes it clear to you that story construction is very similar to
building construction. There are certain unavoidable elements is that you must put
in, or you will disappoint your audience.
People go to the movies and read books in the genre that they are interested in,
and they need to recognize those elements if they are to enjoy the story content
that they are looking for.

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It is rather like eating a peppermint ice cream with chocolate chips. If it hasnt got
the chocolate chips then you are very disappointed.
4. To master the art of writing loglines, the best thing you can do is to think of all
the films you have enjoyed the most, all the books that you have read which are
your favourites, and then just write a simple logline to describe each of them.
Logline writing will give you the means to pierce through everything that surrounds
the core of the story. It will show you whether or not your story is worth writing,
and whether or not there is an audience for it.
It is also quite a fun thing to do to get together with friends and have each of them
come up with the loglines of their favourite stories and films.
Hone them down as much as you can, and make sure that you have descriptive
adjectives for the hero, the villain and the situation that they find themselves in.
5. Dreams. Start a dream journal and record your dreams as often as you can.
What you will find is that after a month or so you will be able to read your own
subconscious. It will often send you some useful message about yourself, but it will
also give you many ideas that can be used in your story writing. These may take
some days or weeks to appear, but they will surely come to the surface.
The film to watch this week is Jaws, one of the biggest box office successes and
also a best selling book.