Beyond the Monoplot: How to Write Unconventional Films (and Why We Should)

This book provides a toolkit for unconventional practice-a comprehensive list of unconventional story shapes and the meanings they create, with accompanying case studies, including: one-act structure; two-act structure; passive protagonists; untimely death of the protagonist, and more. Formed from Aristotelian principles and a three-act shape brought to Hollywood by Broadway playwrights after the advent of sync sound, Conventional Monoplot has come to dominate screen storytelling practice throughout the Western world.For the experimental, rule-suspicious, unconventional screenwriter, alternative storytelling models are available.Beyond the Monoplot offers screenwriters and screenwriting students a new way of approaching and quantifying conventional practice, whilst equipping them with the skills and tools to subvert convention and expectation in dynamic and innovative ways. Where the revolutionary New Hollywood period of the ‘60s and ‘70s saw strikingly iconoclastic, original, rule-bre