Should screenwriters consider how their audience's brains interact with their material? Scholar Dr. Connie Shears and writer Paul Joseph Gulino believe so, and have created a Chapman University class around this subject, as well as an accompanying book, The Science of Screenwriting: The Neuroscience Behind Storytelling Strategies. The book took five years to write. In a recent interview with Film Courage, Shears explained several of the book's main concepts and offered some interesting advice for screenwriters from the perspective of a psychologist. Give Your Audiences a Break from Tension Every Three Minutes One of the most important bits of advice offered in the interview is Shears' suggestion that screenwriters should build in contrasts of emotions. In order to maintain audience attention, there has to be an alternation between tension and release. Timing is incredibly important. Shears is basing this advice on studies involving eye tracking of different audiences. According to these studies, audiences can take about three minutes of tension, then there must be a break. Read More...
Published By: NoFilmSchool - Thursday, 18 April, 2019