Grabbing the Reader from Page One, Word One

A Screenplay's First Ten Minutes

Screenplay writers have no longer than 2 hours and 8 minutes, or 128 pages to tell their story.

Within the first 10 minutes of your visual storytelling, the first unit of dramatic action is the set-up, and you must convey three things: who the main character is, what the story is about, and what the dramatic tension is—the circumstances surrounding the action.

G. Mark Sumpter

God's Gospel Drama, Chesterton and Puppets!

We do puppet ministry here in Grants Pass, and it's fun to learn of practical ways to image His hands and little bodies with the stage, scenery, story, conflict and resolution.

“More than a few Christian thinkers have conceived of God in artistic terms, and regarded the creation as an ongoing drama, with a vast cast of characters, innumerable subplots, and all sorts of conflicts: truth versus falsehood, God versus the Devil, good versus evil. The whole production is heading toward a resolution known only to the Author, but foreshadowed in the Apocalypse, where He is the Author and Finisher, the Alpha and the Omega.

What makes this drama different is that the Author has seen fit to become human, to be born among His characters, then to work, suffer and ultimately die at their hand.

G. K. Chesterton attempted to dramatize this in his play The Surprise, in which the author first performs the action through puppets, who faithfully executes his every command. Subsequently, a shift is made to living, self-willed men and women who manage to make a mess of things. From offstage the author cries: What do you think you are doing to my play? Stop it! I am coming down.”

From The Seductive Image: A Christian Critique of the World of Film by K.L. Billingsley from Crossway Books, 1989

G. Mark Sumpter

Fun Stuff

Christian BookSellers Convention in Time for the Holidays



Still grieving over the Lakers' loss in the NBA finals, Philip Mackenzie receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, asking him to come to an abandoned sports bar in the Oregon wilderness to talk it over. What Phil doesn't realize is that God is about to reveal Himself in a familiar earthly form that will powerfully draw him to the Divine. What transpires is a dialogue that will wrestle with the timeless question, "Where is God when your favorite sport team stinks?" The answers Phil receives will astound and transform him as he finally understands who God is for the first time in his life: a really tall black guy with a heart of gold.

WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING ABOUT "THE SHAQ":
"This book does for our generation what John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress could never do for his: Fictionalize God as an NBA center. It's that stupid." --- John Piper, pastor and author

"With cameos by David Beckham and Peyton Manning as the other Persons of the Trinity, The Shaq is a theological slam dunk!" --- ESPN

"We already idolize sports figures in America, so why not idolize God, too?" --- Redbook

"Get this book and play some one-on-one with the coolest God ever!" --- Boy's Life

HT: The Sacred Sandwich

G. Mark Sumpter