Great to see a filmmaker here! Hi I am into filmmaking as well. Check my blog out when you have time... Love to share more with you in the future. As for you work, looking forward to it. Nice to meet you hear at alivenotdead.com

Cokie - I can't use transformers, I've not seen it. But I will use try to explain in simple example terms..... Bob is our hero - he wants to be a musician and wants to practice every day - but his evil neighbor Larry wants him to be quiet and is always complaining. This is good vs. evil. To make this deeper, we need to understand Larry. Larry is a guy who grew up on welfare who wanted nothing in life but to be successful and take care of his ailing mother. He is studying for a big exam which will make him a doctor. But everytime he tries to sleep - Bob starts playing his guitar really loud. Now we understand Larry. Now, we see both have legitimate goals. That explanation is not meant to make for a great movie - just to explain the idea. What if we have two parents who are getting a divorce and they both want to have custody of the child? However, they both need to live in a different city - what is best for the child? This is actually a real conflict. Okay - so that is the first part of the idea. The next part is about building your stories from your conflicts instead of putting conflicts onto your stories. This is a little more difficult to explain unless someone has written storeis before. Essentially - when you write a story - you often know what you want to have happen. Sometimes writers will start getting into the trap of making scenes which get their characters to the places that the writer needs in order for their plot to be told. However, I'm suggesting that you should think of your writing as a collection of conflicts which naturally form a story. For example. Let's pick a unifying idea that power corrupts. So, all my conflicts listed will be about power corrupting and I want to show it in relationship to a divorce (just because I gave that example a moment ago) So I just start brainstorming CONFLICTS (vs. "plot) John is being exploited by the governement John is fighting to be a part of the government to control this John's wife does soemthing illegal which makes it hard for John to achieve this and they end up divorcing. John becomes the new leader John uses his new contacts to take his child to win his lawsuit against his wife to keep his child. And low and behold - I've told a story.

HuisyG - Jung and Campbell are both common sources to reference for screenwriters. If you want to explore that idea - read the excellent book "Stealing Fire From The Gods." Carmellarose and HuisyG - Also note that I'm talking about my own creative process and providing thoughts which may help you. Everyone is different and everyone's goals are different. I am, however, not a believer in following the strict patterning rules of many writing "systems" like when people use "the hero's journey" like a fill-in-the-blank form. My feeling on connecting scenes is from editing. You end up cutting out all that stuff taht doesn't really mean anything and if you accidently put some piece of important information in there and not in a good scene - then when you're editing your movie your stuck thinking "wow, I can't cut out this really boring connecting scene because I established something in it." Best to just make all the scenes matter.

* * * * SPOILERS ABOUT THE MOVIE FLIGHTPLAN * * * * * * Cokie - I have seen this film. I don't want to say you're right or wrong... because I am only talking about an approach. So I will say this instead: It is impossible for us to know what the screenwriter was initially inspired by on this story... I'm going to guess it went like this: How about a thriller set on a plane? What if a mother got on a plane and fell asleep only to discover that her daughter was gone? And not only that - everyone on the plane insists her daughter was never there! So the real oscillation point of this movie is this: Is she crazy or is she sane? Everything that happens is going to be about this CONTROLLING QUESTION. We need to believe her, then not believe her, then believe her again, then not believe her again - and so on. Oscillation. So now the writer starts brainstorming conflicts which would emphasize this. And from there, characters are born and more conflicts are created. It is possible that the writer had her on the way back with her husband's casket just to make use feel like "wow, she could be going through a really hard time and really could be delusional." and then later decided to use that as part fo the evil scheme. OR maybe they needed that as part of the evil scheme and then realized it served the controlling idea. Either way - all the ideas are supporting the controlling idea and not abstract or external plot oriented ideas. like... "at some point she'll shoot some people" or "at some point she starts flying the plane on her own!" Those are just things that happen - and not nearly as powerful as some of the subtle things that happen. Remember - what I'm talking about here is very much just a way for a writer to start getting their story. The storygame will help do this as well.