Isn’t that every writer’s greatest fear? Producer Anne Marie Gillen recently posed this question to our Mastermind Group: ”What keeps you awake at night?What are those nasty thoughts that keep playing around in your head? The shoulda-coulda-woulda?” It stimulated such an open and honest discussion about our communal fears and insecurities that we entrepreneurial artists all share but rarely [...]
Editor’s Note: From the archives of Script Magazine, we give you a 2002 piece from William Martell that is still relevant today. A few days ago I had dinner with a group of screenwriters, including my friend Bob, who just made his first sale to Linda Obst at Paramount. By the end of this year there will [...]
From the digital archives of ‘Script Magazine,’ we bring you a past interview of Syd Field. Screenwriting “Guru” Syd Field sits down with Script Magazine to share his knowledge on story structure and discuss the difficult task of breaking in the industry. Ask screenwriters what the fundamental structure of a feature screenplay is and they’re likely [...]
MISSING FROM SPEC SCRIPTS AND STUDIO FILMS FOR YEARS MUST FIND TO RESUSCITATE AILING BOX-OFFICE LAST SEEN IN SUCCESSFUL TELEVISION SERIES AND UNPRODUCED SPEC SCRIPTS CALL FRUSTRATED AGENT WITH ANY INFORMATION LEADING TO THEIR RECOVERY 1-800-SELL-SPEC THE CRIME: SOMETHING’S WRONG The last time I wrote an article, it was about a problem that walks into [...]
Chances are, if you want to sell your screenplay to a major film producer, you’re going to have to write the kind of role that a movie star is dying to play. I accomplished this feat almost by accident when I chose Napoleon Bonaparte as the hero for my film project, Betsy and the Emperor. [...]
If you make your career as a comedy writer, it’s a good idea to learn how to write funny in a variety of different mediums. That’s especially true these days with new media popping up faster than you can say, “tweet.” Taking as my inspirations such multi-hyphenates as Woody Allen and Steve Martin, I’ve always [...]
A while back, I received a rewrite of a script by an aspiring screenwriter that I have been working with for a while now. The first draft was based on a very cool idea and had some terrific elements in it with an enormous amount of potential, but the overall piece had some tremendous problems [...]
Margin Call’s J.C. Chandor, From Script to Screen: The Rum Diary, Writers on Writing: J. Edgar, Final Draft, Inc. Hall of Famer Steven Zaillian, Terence Winter’s Boardwalk Empire, Pacing Your Script, Talking to Hollywood, Secrets of Action Screenwriting, and Much More!
Emilio Estevez’s The Way, Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene, Guillermo del Toro and Matthew Robbins’ Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark adaptation, and Will Reiser’s 50/50 are all featured in the September/October issue of Script. Plus, John Buchanan on why concept is king, John Truby on the craft of TV writing, and William Akers on avoiding “rubber stamp” errors in your script. All this and more in the new issue!
