How Professional Screenwriters Outline A compilation of outlining approaches featuring screenwriters and filmmakers including Vince Gilligan, Quentin Tarantino, Alex Garland…
2023 Austin Film Festival & Writers Conference I’m moderating two panels, participating in a roundtable, and leading a post-screening Q&A for the world premiere of the documentary The…
Screenwriting Tip: Tarantino, Sorkin, and Dialogue as Purpose Analysis of long dialogue-centric scenes in The Social Network and Pulp Fiction reveals that underneath the entertaining conversations lies…
Screenwriting Tip: What makes a movie a big budget and a small budget There are critical choices a writer can make at the script stage which directly influence a project’s budget… and its potential viability…
Why Is This Not a Movie? Check out my podcast conversation advocating for a sequel for one of my favorite action comedies: The Nice Guys.
What are you afraid of? The single greatest inhibitor to creativity is fear. Do you recognize any of these negative voices?
Screenwriting Tip: A New Angle Into an Old Story Looking for your next spec script subject? It just might be waiting for you in a history book.
Hollywood Tales Screenwriter Ben Maddow with a great story about 1950s Hollywood producer Philip Yordan.
Script Club: “Women Talking” An in-depth video conversation about the Oscar-winning screenplay written by Sarah Polley.
On Writing “It’s baseball, not football — a long season, slumps, errors, humiliations, bad feelings, bad weather, jet lag, all that stuff, and you…
Page One: “Love & Friendship” (2016) Written by Whit Stillman, based on the novella “Lady Susan” by Jane Austen
Write a Worthy Nemesis Workshop your story’s antagonist character in my 1-week online course. Begins Monday, October 16th.
Script To Screen: “The Lost Boys” A pivotal scene from the 1987 movie The Lost Boys, screenplay by Janice Fischer & James Jeremias and Jeffrey Boam, story by Janice Fischer…
Interview: Brian Duffield Conversation with the writer-director of the new science fiction horror movie No One Will Save You.
Do you write “high concept” stories or not? And just generally, what are your thoughts about “high concept” movies?
Writing Tip: An Argument Against Screenplay Formulas Christopher Hampton: “I don’t believe in rules for writing screenplays. What that gives you is formula, and the result will be formulaic.”