FCB in The Guardian

There was a good article in yesterday's Guardian by Frank Cottrell Boyce, which can be found here. As a little teaser, here's what he has to say about the three act structure...

All the manuals insist on a three-act structure. I think this is a useless model. It's static. All it really means is that your screenplay should have a beginning, middle and end. When you're shaping things, it's more useful to think about suspense. Suspense is the hidden energy that holds a story together.

Oooh, controversial!

I've been thinking about structure and pacing quite a lot recently, and this little article is helping me frame some of my thoughts in a wider context. I may well post some of this meandering old nonsense at a later date, but in the meantime, hop over to the article and have a gander.

Linkage Mania

Even if you thought Billy Elliot was a load of torrid guff, these articles on the Times Online site are all pretty good (as I’m in search of a working method at the moment, they are especially interesting)...

How John Hodge adapted Trainspotting

Sir Tom Stoppard on writing Shakespeare in Love

How Lee Hall wrote Billy Elliot

David Hare on adapting The Hours

Also, want to know why The Golden Compass was a frustrating grab bag of exposition and all round rubbishness? Let Sit Tom fill you in:

I wrote the first draft of The Golden Compass, but no director was attached to it. Ultimately it got a director [Chris Weitz] who liked to write his own scripts. He never even read mine.