Go Into The Story

A guest post from screenwriter Tom Benedek (Cocoon), co-founder of Screenwriting Master Class: SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT THE REWRITE PROCESS Personally, I tend to enjoy rewriting. Some of the time. Of course, it is not always fun to hear criticism from friend-readers, to see the glaring problems — bad dialogue,

Aristotle’s “Poetics” is one of the most important influences on the evolution of our collective understanding of Story, yet a few years back it struck me I had only read portions of it, never the whole text. So beginning in May 2013 and continuing pretty much each week until

October is classic international movies month. Today’s guest post comes from Traci Nell Peterson. Movie Title: Cinema Paradiso Year: 1988 Writers: Giuseppe Tornatore and Vanna Paoli (collaborating writer), Richard Epcar (English version) Lead Actors: Philippe Noiret, Enzo Cannavale, Antonella Attili Director: Giuseppe Tornatore IMDb Plot Summary: A filmmaker recalls

Reader question via email from Joe: Hi Scott! A question about supporting characters. How do I make supporting characters that don’t necessarily have that much screen time but that I feel are essential to the story distinctive and interesting? In the script I’m writing at the moment, I

Every several months since 2013, we’ve had a Classic Movie Month in which I invite GITS readers to volunteer writing up an overview of one of their favorite movies. We’ve moved through this process decade by decade, the idea being to create an online resource for writers to

This week’s writing deals and movie project news. Nika Agiashvili heist thriller spec script “The Silver Arrow” sells to Green-Light International. Eric D. Cohen adapting “Radioactive Boy Scout” to write and direct for OBB Pictures. Paul Duddridge drama “Together” with Marmont Films, Duddridge to direct. Ray Gideon and

If it worked for Johann Sebastian Bach and F. Scott Fitzgerald… Perhaps you’ve heard stories about how a young Felix Mendelssohn transcribed note for note musical scores by Johann Sebastian Bach, just to get the feel of how Bach wrote music. Or about how F. Scott Fitzgerald transcribed the

A /film interview with Doctor Strange co-writer and director Scott Derrickson: This morning we asked Kevin [Fiege] what sort of subgenre this movie falls into. And he said supernatural, which feels very vague. But just from what we’ve been able to sort of see, it looks like sort

The Daily Dialogue theme next week: Cooking, suggested by Katha. “Throughout the world sounds one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me the chance to do my very best.” Babette’s Feast (1987) Oh, I can think of a lot of memorable cooking scenes in movies. How

A special treat today: An interview with screenwriters Howard Koch and Julius J. Epstein, who along with his brother Philip G. Epstein, received “screenplay by” credit for the classic movie Casablanca (1942). Apparently this was the last interview Koch gave as he died shortly thereafter. It’s interesting to see

Today the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science announced six winners of the 2016 Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting. They are: Michele Atkins, “Talking About the Sky” Spencer Harvey and Lloyd Harvey, “Photo Booth” Geeta Malik, “Dinner with Friends” Elizabeth Oyebode, “Tween the Ropes” Justin Piasecki, “Death of an Ortolan”

We all know John Cleese from his work with Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Fawlty Towers, but he has also emerged as something of an authority on creativity. Here is an excerpt from a presentation he gave in Belgium some years ago: Here is a transcript of the main