10 Screenwriters on Screenwriting: Vol. 1
Professional writers reflect on the craft.
Professional writers reflect on the craft.
“My one note of screenwriting advice is: Make sure you can *see* the movie before you start writing the actual script.”
— Arash Amel
“Sometimes you’re swinging your way through a first draft like a blind miner with a pick-axe. That’s OK. Just get it done.”
— Justin Marks
“It’s really important to start off well. If you grab people early in a script, they’re going to keep reading.”
— Carter Blanchard
“No matter what the concept is, nobody cares if there’s not an empathetic way into the story.”
— Daniel Kunka
“The challenge of screenwriting is to say much in little and still preserve an effect of leisure and natural movement.”
— Raymond Chandler
“Outlining is necessary work, but you have to have something left to discover during the writing or you won’t be inspired.”
— Liz W. Garcia
“I think it’s always easier to revise a script, even a truly awful one, than face the tyranny of the blank page.”
— Stan Chervin
“You have to empathize with, even love the villains you write. Otherwise it just becomes caricature.”
— Lisa Joy
“A screenwriter’s currency is a finished script. Not an outline, a take, a beat sheet, a rough draft. A finished script.”
— F. Scott Frazier
“My best writing has been on the scripts I wrote as suicide notes to the industry — sort of, ‘Fuck you, guys, I’m outta here.’”
— Marc Norman
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