We are helping promote the upcoming Scottsdale Screenwriting Conference that is taking place Nov. 6. Click here to register.

One of our guest speakers, Professor Richard Walter of UCLA just shared this piece with us for attendees. Enjoy!

Little things look like big things.

Every one of the billions of cells in our body contains enough information in its DNA to replicate the entire body of which it is only the smallest part.

Shatter a substance into its smallest parts, its atoms, and observe there a reflection of something that looks very much like the whole universe, with electrons as planets in orbit around their nuclei, reminiscent of the earth in orbit around the sun.

During part of our upcoming Scottsdale workshop we’ll work our way backwards, that is, we’ll subject the first couple of pages of several scripts to preposterously close scrutiny, shattering it into its parts, extrapolating key screenwriting principles. It’s one thing to consider screenwriting issues in the abstract, and quite another to engage them from the inside, embracing a hands-on approach. In this manner the precepts take on meaning and heft enabling writers to exploit them effectively in plying their scripts.

We’ll see that in screenplays, too, little things look like big things. That is, individual parts of screenplays in many ways resemble the whole picture. Not the whole screenplay alone but also individual scenes within the screenplay have precise beginnings, middles, and ends. Even parts of parts–for example lines of dialogue–should in a sense resemble the entire film of which they are a part.

We’ll demonstrate that even a mere line of dialogue has a clear beginning, middle, and end. We’ll appreciate that this is true even for a line of dialogue that consists of only a single word.

The purpose? To address the single biggest problem afflicting movies: overwriting. Too many words, too many pages, too much description, too many directions to the actors, too many minutes in the movies.

I’m looking forward to working once again with Arizona writers at an event where we’ll explore and apply some of the key principles addressed in my new book Essentials of Screenwriting.

About the Author: Richard Walter

Richard Walter is a celebrated storytelling guru, movie industry expert, and longtime chairman of UCLA’s legendary graduate program in screenwriting. A screenwriter and published novelist, his latest book, Essentials of Screenwriting, is available in stores now. Professor Walter lectures throughout North America and the world and serves as a court authorized expert in intellectual property litigation.  For more information and to order the new Essentials of Screenwriting, visit www.richardwalter.com.