What goes into writing a great movie script?
Last Updated: 01.07.2025 04:18
Maintain a slush pile/idea file. When you are ready to write, choose the best seeds to plant.
Use status to help drive conflict. King Lear/fool. Upstairs/downstairs.
What you leave unwritten is as important as what you write. SUBTEXT.
How can you know if they are your twin flame and not limerence or obsession?
All rules are made to be broken, but you damn well better know WHY you’re breaking them.
Make sure to pack enough explosives into the rocket.
Don’t direct from the page. Everyone, from the director on down, wants to be part of the process of making movies. Let them do their work.
Turning carbon dioxide into fuel just got easier, thanks to acid bubbles - Tech Xplore
A critical function of storytelling is wish fulfillment. This is why video games are so popular. “That protagonist is JUST LIKE ME.”
Conflict is your power source; without it you have no drama and hence no script.
Write in reverse time. Major characters need to change polarity; minor characters may remain the same at the end.
Learn to tell a story orally and not through writing. Try telling your story to a friend.
Primary characters must change polarities. Secondary characters can change less.
A scene should change valence from beginning to end. Up to down, down to up.
Who’ll be the odd man out in the Cleveland quarterback battle? - NBC Sports
Get up there yourself. Be in a movie. Take some acting (not writing) classes. Learn how a trained actor approaches a text. Learn why actors take roles. They do as much if not more than the writer does.
Actors give better feedback than writers do.
Cut everything that is not a payoff, or a setup for a specific payoff. “Omit needless words.” Think about the sparseness of joke telling, or Grimm Brothers.
Men who stole $6 million golden toilet from English mansion sentenced to prison terms - AP News
To develop a unique voice for each character, try interviewing your characters.
Outline everything. Use story beats. Keep character’s mouths taped up, until they absolutely MUST speak. Write the script and the dialogue at the last minute, after you’ve revised the hell out of the outline.
Research the facts and then throw away the research.
What firsthand information do you have on prisoner-on-prisoner sexual abuse/rape?
Leave holes. Write and unwrite. Put it in, take it out.
Your primary job is to create situations. Modern actors will fuck up your dialogue, despite whatever your contract says.
Audiences are smarter than you think. Something about turning down the house lights makes their IQs go up.
Why do you think Islam oppresses women when Christianity clearly does it more?
The DSM 5 is a wonderful character compendium.
People choose what to see based on the high concept. Make sure to deliver an ending consistent with the high concept -- it is what the audience paid for.
Only God gets it right the first time. Rewrite everything.