Level up your writing - with holiday movies!
Screenwriting Tricks for Authors
As we get down to the wire on these holidays—I mean, move joyously into the festive season—it gets harder and harder to find time to write. I know! So I wanted to do a movie-centric post to help you get in some stealth craft work during family time.
NOTHING will take your writing to the next level faster than watching movies for story structure.
I say this so often I worry about people not hearing me on it anymore. But -
If you can take the time to watch just three movies with intention—looking for the story structure elements we talk about here— your writing will take off in ways you could never have anticipated. Why not make this holiday season a crash course in structure— and maybe write the best book or script of your life so far in the New Year?
(As often happens, this post exceeded Substack’s length limit, so I’m linking to separate posts.)
I’m going to start with The Holiday.
And I’m not going to hold back. This is a terrible movie. And I say that both as someone whose life this kind of is (dual life, movie/book businesses, Scotland/LA) and as a huge fan of Nancy Meyers’ Something’s Gotta Give and It’s Complicated. Every filmmaker makes a bad one sometimes. It’s all part of what makes you a good filmmaker. And that goes for books and every other kind of art.
But why on earth would I analyze one of her bad ones? Well, as I try to remind you all regularly, you can learn from the bad ones, too.
And as inexplicable as it is to me, lots of people love this movie, and rewatch it this time of year. So if that’s you, obviously, you can ignore my personal loathing for it, cue it up, and actually get quite a lot out of it structurally. And it’s on Netflix.
I’ve put together a cheat sheet for you to do that, hitting on Sequences and Story Elements.
The Holiday story structure breakdown
Moving on to better choices!
Here’s a far, far, infinitely far better holiday movie to watch and learn from. There’s no better film to watch (and watch again, and again, and again) to internalize some of the most basic lessons of powerful storytelling.
You might end up watching the truly enchanting and complex Encanto with the kids.
Everyone seems to be watching the just released Leave the World Behind, also available on Netflix — here are some notes on that.
The prequel to The Hunger Games is out, and I highly recommend a rewatch of the first in the series—a great teaching movie that can help you elevate your craft no matter what genre you’re writing in. I have a full story breakdown on this one.
Daisy Jones and the Six is deliciously bingeable and structurally useful - free for Amazon Prime members.
And of course there are ten very detailed movie breakdowns, and shorter notes on dozens of other movies, in each of the workbooks.
Or make your own Master List and work your way through it!
We’ve still got some time—I’m up for holiday movie suggestions if you have any that would be useful to you! Leave a comment and let me know.
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Holy cow! This is in-depth! Thank you for this early Christmas present!
I watched an older movie called Love and Other Drugs. Classic Cinderella story structure with third act breakup and the hero changing his ways to be with her.
Jake Gyllenhaal is a player and Anne Hathaway has Parkinson's. I loved the humor about Viagra. The best part was that they don't say anything directly. As in real life, we don't come out and state our feelings, but we might show it through awkward stuttering or weird innuendo and longing looks. There's a big moment where Jake buys her Chinese food and says, "This is nice." Jake is fully nekkid several times too so that made it perfect for me.