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In all the visual splendor of James Cameron's Avatar, it's easy to overlook the script. In fact, the Avatar screenplay has come in for the same abuse Cameron's Titanic script earned. You've heard the complaints: the story is a Pocahontas rip-off. The bad guys are just evil villains. The dialogue is stilted. In short, great visuals, bad screenwriting. The critics aren't so much wrong as irrelevant. What they don't get is that Cameron is a brilliant writer of pop culture. He is one of three or four best popular storytellers, and his secret, which all current screenwriters need to know, is his mastery of genres. Like Avatar, Titanic had fabulous visuals. But the key to its success was that it combined the disaster film - a sub-form of action - with the love story. These two forms are on opposite ends of the genre spectrum, which is why they are rarely combined, and why Cameron showed his true genius when he put them together. The disaster film gives the audience the thrill of spectacle and scope, something no other medium can do as well. But for that same reason, disaster films have no heart. They're about the thousands of people in the maws of slaughter. They're not personal. That's why Cameron spent most of that film setting up a love story, which is about the community of two, the most personal, heart-filled genre you can get. So when the disaster finally hit, the pain of loss started at the epicenter of the two lovers and spread out from there. Jump forward to Avatar, and Cameron is using the exact same strategy. Avatar isn't just a big, noisy war story set in an outer space future. It's an epic romance, the grand myth combined with the intimate love story. The technical definition of the romantic epic is that the fate of the nation is determined by the love between two people. That is a very tough story weave to do right, but if you do, it has almost infinite worldwide popular appeal. More >> |
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| APPEARANCES |
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| TRUBY BREAKDOWNS |
| ARTICLES |
| 10 Story Techniques You Must Use to Sell Your Script |
| Better have these elements if you want |
| any chance of selling your script. |
| Secrets of Genre |
| Knowing your genres cold. |
| Interview with Screenwriters Radio |
| Top 10 most common mistakes writers |
| make. |
| The Teen Movie |
| From Rebel Without a Cause to |
| Superbad. |
| PODCASTS |
 KCUR (NPR station in Kansas |
| City) |
| KCUR: Screenwriting isn't brain |
| surgery. It may be even more difficult. |
 Part 1 and 2, Premise and |
| Seven Steps |
| Highlights from the opening of John's |
| live lecture. |
| Part 3, Plot |
| 22 Steps to become a master storyteller |
| Part 4, Opposition |
| Great stories walk on two legs: the |
| hero and the opponent. |
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Screenwriting
Over the course of 3 decades, John Truby has taught more than 30,000 students the art of screenwriting. Providing the knowledge and expertise he has applied as a consultant on over 1,000 movie scripts, Truby offers an approach to storytelling that has earned acclaim for his instructional classes and screenwriting software from students and critics alike. Screenwriting Software Truby?s Blockbuster screenwriting package allows students to learn the art of developing ideas into fully realized, professionally structured scripts right at home. Based on a user interface that teaches as you write, Truby?s Blockbuster screenwriting software shows you the deep structural weaknesses that are likely to be in your script and takes you through the ideal order for fixing them. Truby?s Blockbuster software package is the only screenwriting program of its kind to focus in on writing for specific genres. With add-ons for action, comedy, horror and every genre of screenwriting, Blockbuster can be tailored to fit exactly the style of movie you?re working on. Screenwriting Classes From the writers, directors and producers of Shrek to Sleepless in Seattle to Star Wars, Truby?s screenwriting classes have trained some of the top players in Hollywood today. Truby?s audio and video screenwriting courses will teach you hundreds of screenwriting techniques that will allow you to compete with the best. Truby?s 14 hour audio classes and 8 hour video courses focus on the 22 building blocks of every script. These screenwriting tools will take you from beginning to end in the development process of your script idea. Screenwriting Online Classes In addition to screenwriting courses and software, Truby.com also offers classes which include one-on-one interaction with a personal mentor. The Great Screenwriting Online Class is 12 weeks long and contains all the information from the Truby live seminar. Writing exercises at the end of each lesson help you apply the course information to your story. |
| At Truby's Writers Studio, we provide the finest screenwriting classes and software for writers who wish to work professionally in the worldwide entertainment business. |
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Breakthrough: 22 Steps to Your Best Story Ever |
| The only screenwriting software that gives you a great story, in a fraction of the time, while you write your script. | |
| "This guy is the best script doctor in the movie industry, and this program makes you tell a good story whether you want to or not. A winner. If you even toy with the idea of storytelling, you must have this product. Highly recommended."
John C. Dvorak, PC Magazine |
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Interested in Screenwriting Classes That Only Teach Professional Techniques? |
| Truby's screenwriting and genre classes are based on the revolutionary idea that professional screenwriters use fundamentally different techniques than everyone else. | |
| From the writers, directors and producers of Shrek, Sleepless in Seattle and Star Wars, Truby's award-winning screenwriting classes have trained some of the top players in Hollywood today. |
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Write Comedy at the Professional Level |  |
Are You Ready to Accept the Challenge of the Masterpiece? |
| Our Comedy Software takes you beyond being funny to writing a professional script that builds its humor all the way to the end. | Our Masterpiece Software shows you all the techniques you need to write this most challenging and rewarding of all story forms. | ||
| 99.00 List price 49.00 Sale price |
99.00 List price 49.00 Sale price |
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Rewrite and Development Techniques from 'the best script doctor in the movie industry.' |  |
Why Not Go for the Best? |
| All scripts must undergo the rewriting and development process. With our Story Development Course, you'll learn the most advanced techniques in the business. | Now you too can master the techniques required for screenwriting at the highest level with our Masterpiece: Techniques of Advanced Screenwriting Course. | ||
| $99.00 List price $49.00 Sale price |
$99.00 List price $49.00 Sale price |
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UP IN THE AIR |
| Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner accomplish a rare feat in Up in the Air, which is to write a transcendent romantic comedy. More >> |
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THE LOVELY BONES |
| Spoiler alert: this structure breakdown contains details about certain events in the story.
I didn't want to see The Lovely Bones. I liked the novel. But the thought of having to watch the rape and murder of a young girl seemed unbearable. Turns out I was wrong. You don't see the rape and murder. Far more important, the film has some deeply moving moments that brought home for me the true tragedy of the loss of a single human life, and that was the result of choices the screenwriters made. Ironically, those same choices dictated that the film was not as strong as it could have been. More >> |
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PARANORMAL ACTIVITY |
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Paranormal Activity isn't a great film. But it is a brilliant indie filmmaking strategy. In my article "10 Story Techniques You Must Use to Sell Your Script" (see below) I state that "if you're writing a screenplay for an indie film, write horror, thriller, or love." Horror is the most consistently popular genre around the world after myth. But unlike the epic-scale myth, horror can be made for very little money.
So why doesn't everyone just go out and make their own indie horror film? Almost everyone trying to break in does. More >> |
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Want to Know How Great Stories Really Work? |
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"Hollywood story consultant Truby commits his vast knowledge of screenwriting and storytelling to the page in this handy guide for aspiring writers of all types."
Kristine Huntley, Booklist Review |
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The Anatomy of Story is John Truby's long-awaited first book, and it shares all of his secrets for great screenwriting. Writers will come away with an extremely precise set of tools to work with - specific, useful techniques to make the audience care about their characters, and that make their characters grow in meaningful ways. They will construct a surprising plot that is unique to their particular concept, and they will learn how to express a moral vision that can genuinely move an audience.
17.00 List price 14.95 Sale price |
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"I think of all of them Truby's the best... his stuff cuts the deepest, and allows you to develop the most detailed structure and outline of any of the teaching methods."
Larry Wilson, co-writer Beetlejuice, The Addams Family
The Writer's Guild Journal "Through John's course I understand what it takes to write great films. This has given me the ability to pitch my ideas with confidence, because I know they are structurally sound! My feature is being made because of Truby's 22 Step Great Screenwriting Class." Tim Stufflebeam "Truby's 22 Step Great Screenwriting Class is a totally new system.... a course that allows a writer to succeed in the fiercely competitive climate of Hollywood." American Film Institute Magazine "If you're ready to graduate from the boy-meets-girl league of screenwriting, meet John Truby...(His courses) draw epiphanies that make you see the contours of your psyche as sharply as your script." LA Weekly "John Truby's 22 Step Great Screenwriting Class is a thoroughly detailed and impeccably presented education in the anatomy and psychology of any good story... an invaluable road map that I would recommend to any serious writer." Jeff Arch, screenwriter Sleepless in Seattle |
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"I'm not exaggerating: Truby's Blockbuster revolutionized how I work. It's the simplest way I've ever found to build structure, character and theme. If you use a computer to write screenplays, you'll want Blockbuster."
Laurence Dworet, screenwriter Outbreak "Blockbuster is all that it is advertised to be, a virtual screenwriting school, and a great one at that. Skip Press, The Complete Idiot's Guilde to Screenwriting "Blockbuster is an ingenious and multilevel guide through the maze of story organization... way ahead of any other writing tool I know of." Jeff Arch, screenwriter Sleepless in Seattle "Truby's Blockbuster provides a structure both to elicit and keep track of the multitude of ideas and details that emerge in transforming the first vague musings into the finished project." L. R. Shannon, New York Times "Among the legions of screenplay guru devotees, few would deny that John Truby is the most cutting edge of the lot. For success, Truby and his software program is a match made in screenwriting heaven... No, Blockbuster will not solve all of writing's perennial ills, but it does bring the cure several giant steps closer." Wade Major, Entertainment Today "As a result of Blockbuster, I won a Gold Award at the Charleston Film Festival, and a Bronze Award at the Houston Film Festival in the Comedy category." Mike Ellis, screenwriter "My pleasure to let you know an agent has picked up three of my screenplays. All were written by the guidelines of Blockbuster." James Russell, screenwriter |