As my own writings are still works in progress, you won’t find anything about them here.

Yet.....



Film Architect?


To me, the closest profession/craft/art form to screenwriting is architecture.

The screenwriter is the person who envisions the film, and how the story should be told. His job is to make sure all the necessary elements of the story are in their right place. He has to do this in an engaging, exiting and «new» way. And when his job is done, he hands the drawings over to the builders who makes his plans come alive.

The screenwriter’s job is part engineering, part art. The engineering part is fundamental. If this job is not done perfectly, you could risk the whole building collapsing. The same goes to storytelling. Structure get a lot of bad press, and it’s not the most exciting element of the film industry. But it’s the most fundamental one. Without a solid structure, no grand cathedrals can be built.

And then there is the art of it. This is the magical part, the part that separates one solid structure from another solid structure. One is boring, the other one makes you laugh and cry. It makes you feel alive. It makes you see your own life in a new light. It gives you a glimpse of eternity.

Just like in architecture, the best screenwriters turns the «laws» of structure into art.


About «new» stories and the «laws» of structure


No, I don’t believe there are really any new stories. Only new ways of telling the same stories we have been told since the dawn of man.

And I don’t believe you have to follow the «laws» of story structure quite as closely as an architect has to follow the laws of gravity and physics. But you still have to know these «laws» really well, so that you can detect the weaknesses in your story, as well as know what could happen if you intentionally want to break them.



“I shall write old verses on top of new forms.”
—Jean-Luc Godard, 1952