Hey Clan!
So back in June I took a little hiatus from Writers Chat. During that time, our community experienced the delight that is Zena Dell Lowe, award-winning writer and director, and owner of Mission Ranch Films.
In June, Zena talked about Hollywood Storytelling, and absolutely captivated the Writers Chat community!
Well she’s back, and just as engaging as ever! In this episode, Zena teaches how Set-ups & Payoffs lay the foundation of your story.
Zena demonstrates the importance of setups and payoffs in creating emotional impact in story narrative. She also offers examples of effective and ineffective setups and payoffs from Hollywood films like Jurassic Park, Alien, and The Sixth Sense.
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Zena Dell Lowe is the owner of Mission Ranch Films, an independent film production company based in Bozeman, Montana.
If you love Zena’s teaching style, then check out her courses on Serious Writer Academy!
CBA best-selling, and multi-award-winning author, Eva Marie Everson, is a storyteller with a natural gift for evocative set-ups and payoffs. If you want fiction that effectively demonstrates this principle, then we recommend her highly!
Zena has worked professionally in the entertainment industry for over 15 years as a writer, producer, director, actress, and story consultant. Zena also teaches advanced classes on writing at numerous writer conferences across the country, and as an adjunct professor at Covenant College in Georgia and at Regent University in Virginia Beach. Zena currently resides in Bozeman, Montana, where she offers a variety of services to writers through her company, Mission Ranch Films. Her passion is to support other writers to help them excel at their craft, and ultimately to achieve personal and professional success. As a writer herself, Zena has written screenplays, novels, plays, and a number of articles on writing. She also writes for comic books, most recently, Strawberry Shortcake, by IDW Publishing.
Zena has won numerous awards for her work, including “Best International Short Film Director” for Rag Doll at the 2015 Louisiana International Film Festival, two “Grand Prize” wins for her full-length feature script, “Trial by Fire,” at both the 2016 New York Screenplay Competition, and ISA’s highly acclaimed 2016 Emerging Screenwriter’s competition, as well as many others. Zena has several film projects in the works, including “Corruptible,” a supernatural thriller written by Sara McDermott Jain, which Zena has agreed to produce.
To see more about Zena and these projects, check out her website at www.missionranchfilms.com.
