6. Be As Creative As Possible With Your Settings
I can't actually remember where I heard this first or where I actually saw it (it might be from an existing movie, to be honest, though I apologise for forgetting its name if so), but it's always stuck with me as an image and it constantly springs to mind whenever I write a scene. The scene was as follows: two gangsters are discussing a future mob hit in private. A simple concept, and one that we've seen in a whole bunch of movies. The thing that made this particular variation on the scene so memorable, though? The setting. The gangsters were sitting in an empty children's playground. On the swingset. Just chatting business. But the strange juxtaposition made it feel oddly sinister: the fact that two men are talking about killing somebody, but in a place that we associate with children and laughter and families, just made it far creepier than if they had been talking in a restaurant or an apartment, which is where these scenes always seem to take place. Point is, I remembered it. It stuck with me. And it's with this attitude that you need to construct all of your scenes, because you're striving to create a continuous stream of moments that people will remember. Got a scene with people just talking in a hallway? Where else you could move the action so that the scene is instantly more memorable? It doesn't have to be crazy and it doesn't even have to juxtapose - you simply want to create a memorable image; one that sticks in the minds of the audience, no matter how big or small the moment is.