Great stuff, Nate! Looking forward to the next installment.

Thanks, Teddy! Much appreciated. I think, sadly, this was the last installment. In terms of major points that I wanted to cover, these were the three things that initially jumped out at me when I watched the video for the first time. I'm sure I could scrape through and cobble something else together, but nothing close to the content of these three. I'm working on a new series of columns that should be coming quite soon touching on ideas of failure that I'm really excited about, though, so more stuff is coming soon :)

Thank you, Nate! Such a pleasure to read this, I look forward to more series from you. So informative, and I was delighted to read about "family bonds." Family Getaway is when I realized what a useful device family is, that familial cues are universal, so toggling them a good way to engage audience. That night I watched Human Target (I miss that show), Winston razzed Ames about her fiance, like any brother or uncle might, and every person watching got that, felt it, this scene that replays in all families. So even if there's not an actual family, superimpose those expectations, the rhythms and chatter, on the characters surrounding the protag whenever you can. At least that's my reverse engineering plan for getting a kickass emotional throughline in scripts and taking over the world :-) Related, the other thing I discovered from Family Getaway, specificity in character detail, like the character that got stories from everyone she intersected with, I had that jolt of recognition, the buzz was insightful, it further engaged me, so flesh out characters with real world traits, the "authentic" vibe will ring true, and a lucky swath of population will get an extra buzz.

Glad you enjoyed it! Thank you--always nice to hear people are getting something out of this :). RE: "family bonds"--definitely. It's something I've been noticing a lot recently, thanks in part to all the time I've spent going over the DGA video and preparing for each of the columns, but the power of a PRIMAL narrative element in your screenplay is huge. Family bonds, a powerful love, protecting a child/wife/husband/son/friend, survival, greed...not just because they're usually grounds for a lot of built-in conflict, but because they're so universal. Those are the things that everyone can relate to, regardless of a language barrier or a cultural gap: everyone understands true love. Everyone can put themselves in a protagonists shoes who is fighting for survival or willing to do anything to help someone they love. And, like you said, even if there's not the actual family in your script to play with, to bring some element of that. Completely agree. Obviously not every screenplay can be specifically about these primal story set-ups. Airplane! isn't the most primal story in the world... But to be able to take bits and pieces of these ideas and scale them to fit your specific story? I think it's always going to flesh out your story and allow people to connect with your movie on an innate level. To some degree. That sort of goes hand in hand with the "authenticity" point too. Same ballpark: factors, pieces, of your story that people can relate to.