The Business of Screenwriting: Everything you wanted to know about specs Part 17: Write What They’re Buying.
Go Into The Story Resource: Screenwriting 101 Hundreds of observations about the craft of screenwriting from professional writers.
Script To Screen: “A Few Good Men” A scene from the 1992 movie A Few Good Men, screenplay by Aaron Sorkin based on his play.
Daily Dialogue — May 30, 2018 Margot Robbie: [In a bubble bath with a glass of champagne] Basically, Lewis Ranieri’s mortgage bonds were amazingly profitable for the big…
Reader Question: How to handle a character who changes names? When in doubt, check out actual movie scripts to see how the pros handle it — and we do with the screenplay for Tootsie.
Go Into The Story Resource: The Story Behind Script Coverage Script readers are Hollywood’s threshold guardians, so it behooves writers to try to understand their mindset.
Screenwriting 101: Liz Hannah “Read everything you can. Read every script you can bad, good. Read Paddy Chayefsky’s collected works. That’s probably the best place to…
Daily Dialogue — May 29, 2018 Mr. Potter: [on the telephone] George, there is a rumor around town that you closed your doors. Is that true? [pause] Oh, well, I’m very…
Pound Out That First Draft! Go from FADE IN to FADE OUT in my upcoming online writing workshop. Starts June 11th!
Go Into The Story Resource: The Spirit of the Spec Creativity meets Productivity in the 5 stages of writing a spec script.
On Writing “Think of your main characters as dinner guests. Would your friends want to spend ten hours with the characters you’ve created? Your…
Daily Dialogue — May 28, 2018 Grumpy: That’s a lot of money. If this Joker guy was so smart, he’d have had us bring a bigger car. [promptly draws his gun and points it a…
Mark, people who do NOT analyze scripts and movies to depth do themselves a disservice when it… So you, Dave, and others who take the time to do script and movie breakdowns, then reflect on the story’s inner working, that’s a leg up…
Go Into The Story Movie Analysis: “The Silence of the Lambs” The entire 6 part series delving into this critically acclaimed movie.
Daily Dialogue — May 27, 2018 Gust Avrakotos: Promises were made! Cravely: Not by me. Gust Avrakotos: I’ve been with the company for twenty-four years. I was posted in…
Great to hear and appreciate your comments during the week. Re ‘masks’: This is yet another reason why working with character archetypes can be so helpful in both character development and…
Saturday Hot Links Time for the 343rd installment of Saturday Hot Links, your week’s essential reading about movies, TV, streaming, Hollywood, and other…
Movie Analysis: “The Silence of the Lambs” — Part 6: Takeaways Watch this critically acclaimed movie and analyze it all week.
