My most hated action cliche is when the bad guy or the bad guy's second in command is dead, and they pop up for one last shot at the hero. Sometimes, it works for the story, but most don't pull it off, and it comes off as a lazy jump scare.

What is this "discipline" you speak of? I ain't been near it.

You never mentioned the worst one: The villain waiting too long to kill the hero

A video on writing believable characters for worldbuilding would be awesome. I love Dune 2 but man - the dialogue from Zendaya takes me out of the movie!!! Also, I feel like accents are just going away as a skill for actors and more more and more people are just playing themselves in movies today!

In my first book I averaged 3 scenes per chapter. How many scenes do you use per chapter? Per book?

I have just one problem - Circularity seems to be more of an European concept, we are just so used to it, that we don't see it anymore - but you don't have that in India, Nepal or Japan - f.e. Marabharata

Hi Brandon...Great video..I'm writing in present tense. My story starts on Day seven in present tense than jumps around to say day four then day one...can these chapters be written in present tense aswell? Thanks bud...

Deliberate explosions are grey. After watching action-adventure films, people anticipate explosions to be filled with brilliant flaming color, but this is only true of accidental blasts. A gas leak, an aircraft crash, or a fuel depot will billow into bright infernos, great flowing shapes of vivid orange and yellow, flowing spheres of conflagration. Deliberate explosions are different. A grenade slams its world; it doesn’t burn it. Ordinance or dynamite blasts the world into grey dust. An ashy cloud of dust replaces breathable air: plaster, smoke, and choking microparticles. No one reacts at the time. In film, the hero bravely walks away, disregarding. The love interest ducks as shrapnel flies her way. A true explosion exists in the past or future tense, never the present. It’s simply over. Human response is limited to questions: Why am I on the floor? What is this pain inside me?

I wish main characters had to reload more often or didn't carry 50 mags on them for whatever gun they're carrying. I think I've seen before in some movies the MC's magazine empties as they're firing and they have to quickly find cover. It's a nice little reminder of the characters mortality.

Worst action cliches? James Bond franchise, without a doubt. They became more and more ridiculous as time went by. Spectacular stunts over the last sixty years, but nonethless out of touch with reality (or physics).

Good plot twists with no sons of anarchy on it???? Cmon bro

LOL I wonder sometimes if I'm starting too late and ending too early.

Before watching: 1. Entering the final battle with, "Let's finish this." 2. A convo between hero and villain in which the villain says, "We're not so different, you and I." 3. A car falling aways explodes. 4. A handgun dropped always goes off. After 5. A hero with an unrealistic resume - He's a blackbelt in five schools of martial arts, a Navy SEAL, a Green Beret, a expert shot with any weapon, and can read seven languages.

For the 3rd I had hoped you'd used mel gibson's cry to war monologue in braveheart. That was good. Another good one is mark ruffalo's monologue in spotlight "...not a king or a fricking pope!" Just discovered this channel. Great content

Boys season 4-kimiko vs firecracker...kimiko is having problems beating *her*??? i get it, if she takes out the whole room in seconds, there's no scene...but still...

I actually liked the Castlevania one.

I'm not an expert so don't quote me on this- But I'm fairly certain body armor doesn't help against blunt force weapons or knives the same way it's meant to stop a bullet. I mean, it would cushion the blow somewhat and you wouldn't suffer the same level of injury, but someone with a baseball bat would still be able to knock you around even while you're wearing full body armor.

I think one of the worst action clichés is that "the dead guys just disappear". The best example: John Wick 4 Stair Scene (if not all of it)

Everyone in the Walking Dead is hypercompetent up until they suddenly become incompetent.

That `gymnastics` scene in Lost World was indeed ridiculous and it seems as though it was only included to setup Ian to say that line "and they cut you from the team?". However, I still feel like it was the best movie of the entire franchise because it included so many scenes that were in the first novel that never made it into the first movie and I loved the ending where the T-Rex comes ashore in LA and wreaks havoc. I would love to see you do a deep dive on the whole franchise, even if the first two movies were the only truly great ones.

The force applied to the target by a bullet is equal to the recoil of the gun, minus the air-resistance on the bullet. Have you ever shot a pistol? Most have a very gentle recoil that does not hurt at all. The reason that bullets are deadly is that they penetrate. If you are wearing a helmet with an outer layer so hard that bullets bounce off it, then the amount of energy transferred to the head is small, largely because bullets are not very big and heavy, On the other hand, being smashed in the head with a medieval weapon by a big man is a different matter. The helmet will still guard you against penetration, but the massive impact can still knock you senseless. Throw a sewing needle point-first at a balloon and the balloon bursts on the spot. If the balloon is needle-proof, then throwing a pin at it will do very little, but punching the balloon will send it across the room.

When there's battles and dirt is thrown randomly from above like... what happened?

The reverse of every head shot hits. When trained heroes (characters), who are very confident using firearms, and in scenes where their marksmanship is on display can hit a quarter thrown in the air from 100 paces, but cant seem to shoot and hit anybody, anywhere, in a gun fight. Burn Notice was a show I enjoyed that was a constant example of this.

ahh ahh intro

Rorschach's intro in Watchmen was pretty good

As a defender of "Lost World: Jurassic Park" Yeah, the gymnastics scene was pretty silly.

about unnecessary damage: comic author and artist, Scott McCloud, did a comic named "DESTROY!", subtitled "The loudest comic in the world", where a supposed superhero rampages through the city and takes apart whatever he could find. and when they finally find his GF and make her stop him, it turns out it was all a misunderstanding... and the city lying in ruins was just shrugged off.

When the villain is never brought to actual justice, but instead is left alone in a room with a loaded pistol (various British detective stories), or falls off a building (Gaston), or gets chomped by a dragon or dinosaur (Jurassic Park), or some other deus ex machina intervenes. This is wonderfully subverted in USS Callister, when the villain is suspended in eternal boredom.

I wrote ideas in blocked WhatsApp number and now there are more than 1000 chats and I don't know how to organise them

What has my eyes rolling often is when the hero cornered, the villain pulls a gun at them, then we hear a shot, and after few seconds of suspension the villain collapses, revealing a side character behind them with a gun.

A great example of the inconsistent damage point was in Stranger Things series 1, and it drove me demented. Near the end, the beastie is confronted by a load of army dudes with machine guns. They open fire but the beastie isn't phased at all, isn't even knocked off its stride. So we've established how powerful this beastie is. Then 5 minutes later it turns up at the kids house and gets its foot stuck in a bear trap and wails in pain. Then the older jock teen runs up and starts bashing it with a baseball bat, which injures the beastie quite badly.

To be fair to Alien 1 and the acid blood, as far as I remember it is never stated explicitly that the big alien has acid for blood. Only the facehugger, as a "defense mechanism". It was only in the sequel where they show the big aliens with acid for blood.

Why do martial artists have to go through a gymnastics routine when they are fighting? Why don't the bad guys attack the hero in a group instead of one at a time? Why do super villains explain their plans to the captured hero instead of killing him? Why are said super villian's henchmen so stupid that they failed potty training? Why do heroes wait to their last round before trying to get out of a deadly situation? Why does the local detective give orders to the SWAT team? Why do the highly trained SWAT team members need body armour and helmets while the detective is bare-headed and wearing only a bulletproof vest? And where do cowboys buy those revolvers with the 50 round chambers?

Training Day's twist is fine. Jake saves the girl in the hood, not just the 3kk people city.

Eeee

Tyler Durden. It was mind blowing.

Can't get enough of these, thank you for four information packed videos. The hours spent here saved me days of work later. Good work.

whole john wick franchise is a huge BS... btw is anyone counting bullets per magazine in those types of movies? I got the feeling it varies between 5 and 500.

Binge watching your dialogue videos. I've written one book that when my editor got to it, pointed out lots of pointless bad dialogue that could be cut without affecting the plot. At the end of the editing I had a crash course lesson through trial and error of what not to do, and when I did things right, they were pointed out as well. I'm working on my second book, but my dialogue is "too natural" and mundane. On the nose is also pretty common for me, since I'm a pretty straightforward person. What I like about your videos is that it starts with what to aim for. And it says it each video, first thing. I know from teaching and learning the first thing and the last thing you hear are often the most remembered. I like how each example has a counter example, of bad first, but good last. Thanks for being willing to share your experience with me, and us. I've gotten much out of it so far. My goal is to find and consume good writing as much as possible, to hopefully rewire my brain to think that way. But short of spending years of watching and reading stories, these videos are pretty effective. Thank you.

I love Roy Batty’s monologue in Bladerunner. Transcendent speech of someone who had just saved his enemy as a last act before expiring. Rutger Hauer supposedly improvised that speech. The score by Vangelis elevates it further.

Omg a video of list of 5 things that isn't 1hr 24 minutes!

This isn't objective, purely subjective. Until you have a life and death confrontation you can't argue that these exclamations aren't earned.🤨

That scene in the lost world… my wife and I watched it a couple weeks ago and it’s a fine movie… then she does the parallel bars… completely ruins like 20 minutes of movie.

My most hated romance cliché is "girlfriend's dad hates the boyfriend for no reason." The couple is clearly happy and the boyfriend is super nice and awesome, but the girlfriend's dad hates him for no reason. And (usually) as a result, either the BF or GF have to work hard to prove the BF's worth and win the asshole dad over, which is never satisfying. I really wish I could throw this fucking trope in a vat of corrosive acid so no story can ever have the misfortune of having it again.

For me the worst cliché is seeing an important character take guaranteed fatal damage, and not only live, but actually walk away from it pretty much unscathed, or slightly wounded at best. Most Bond movies are self aware enough to play it for laughs, but the Wick and Bourne films and others like it are riddled with this problem. And don't get me wrong, I love these movies. But falling off a building 30 feet while trapped in a car and not wearing a seat belt? And the character climbs out shedding less blood than I do from a razor cut? Seriously?

The TV series 24 was great at cliff hangers.

The twist ending to Snape’s story in Harry Potter is one of the best twists of all time.

Regarding the John wick "plot armor" ... I actually wrote a manuscripts with a similar setup (demonic Kaiju with skin impenetrable to bullets), and I made sure to explain their flesh isn't impenetrable, but is more durable based on the amount of energy with which it's attacked. So something that travels 300 ft per second bounces right off, but cold sharp steel does the trick at taking them down. I'm not sure if this is the case in John wick, but I'd like to think that's how their armor works.

I’m not a writer. I’m just here to learn about good writing.

The Others had a great twist when they were revealed to be the ghosts in the house, not the family.