influences

How To Use Plot Devices – Voiceover, Flashback, Montage, Intercut and Dream Sequence

April 10, 2008March 17, 2021
26 Comments

Plot Devices With A Bad Name … There are lots of plot devices in scriptwriting we hear are “frowned on”. We shouldn’t use voiceover or flashback is the usual (or voiceover WITH flashback!). I’ve also heard montage maligned in a similar fashion, as well as intercut and dream sequence. This is a load of rot as far as I’m concerned. You can use what you like. These accusations we see levied like “flashback is a lazy way of telling a story” is just another generalisation. Flashback can be an amazingly dramatic way to tell a story. … For A REASON!!… Read More »How To Use Plot Devices – Voiceover, Flashback, Montage, Intercut and Dream Sequence

Writing & Ethics Part 2: Images, Influences & Childhood

February 10, 2008
7 Comments

There has long been a school of thought that watching television and films harms children; only last week a report was published by some UK Watchdog suggesting that Under-5s should not be exposed at all and that under-14s should have their television watching, particularly in school, reduced radically. Whilst I *sort of* agree on one level – Ofsted’s increasing desire to put a screen and/or technology in-between children and their learning instead of books was a bugbear of mine so severe I actually left teaching because of it – I have to wonder what the world is coming to when… Read More »Writing & Ethics Part 2: Images, Influences & Childhood