10 Screenwriters on Screenwriting: Vol. 1

Professional screenwriters 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

To read 50 Things About Screenwriting, go here.