A good screenplay is a wonderful thing, but no matter how impressive a script may be, its potential will remain forever unfulfilled unless it is actually made into a movie. There are a lot of factors that influence whether or not a screenplay gets produced, but in today’s film industry, the most crucial of these [...]
Some writers have all the luck. They have a gift for writing high-concept comedies, thrillers, horror, or action movies, or other kinds of scripts in “commercial” genres. Their scripts make most agents and producers swoon like tweens at a Justin Bieber concert. And then there’s the rest of us. We love to write intimate dramas, [...]
There’s more opportunity out there for new scribes than just the fabled spec sale. In fact, writing assignments represent a more reliable path to a genuine livelihood. When most aspiring screenwriters imagine their successful against-all-odds assault on Hollywood, they think in terms of a big spec sale that changes their lives overnight. But there is [...]
Screenwriter Richard Curtis is a legend in romantic comedy writing — Bridget Jones’s Diary, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, Love Actually to name a few. So, how did one amazing rom-com writer get to adapt a period drama about a boy separated from his horse during World War I? He got a call from Steven Spielberg, that’s how.
This week we are proud to welcome the creator of some of the UK’s finest and highest-rated TV series of the 1970s, recipient of the Best Series Writer award by the Writers Guild of Great Britain, writer-author-series creator John Finch!
In order to emotionally evolve a character, you need to be able to identify why he has chosen not to evolve prior to the moment in time your story begins.
Scorsese’s Hugo (based on the book by Brian Selznick) joins the ranks of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables and Voltaire’s Candide, other stories with Deist messages, as a profound piece of film literature about our un-accidental places in this world.
Kieran Mulroney and Michele Mulroney comment on the immensely fun, but extremely emotional, experience of being the husband and wife writing team assigned to the new action-comedy Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (the sequel to the successful 2009 Sherlock Holmes, starring Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr.). The film releases December 16.
You’ve been told time and time again that cliché is bad, lazy, even amateurish. So why do so many produced screenwriters rely on the shorthand cliché provides? Award-winning screenwriter Jacob Krueger analyzes the screenplay for Crazy Stupid Love and and discusses how to turn your clichés into unforgettable moments.
