Screenwriting

Francis Ford Coppola discusses the writing process

In this video, Francis Ford Coppola discusses the creative process and describes the steps he went through to write one of his recent projects. I like how he points out early in the video that he's confident he can make a good film with good cinematography but it all comes down to the writing. One [...]

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Tales From the Script

I finally had a chance to see Tales From the Script last night. Every screenwriter should check out this documentary. It features interviews with forty-four screenwriters -- including William Goldman, Frank Darabont, Steven de Souza, and Shane Black -- who discuss the film industry, the development process, and the ups and downs that come with [...]

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How to form a daily writing habit

In my quest to become a better writer, I've taken classes, read dozens of how-to books, kept a journal, and joined local and online writing groups. After all this time, I've learned there is one habit that will improve your writing more than any other: Write every day. It seems so simple, yet any writer [...]

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Giving yourself the freedom to fail

Fear of failure is something that keeps many people from writing. They dream of being published but hold back because they're afraid their writing isn't good enough. They worry other people will read it and think it sucks. Sometimes this fear is enough to stop a writer from sending her manuscript out to agents and [...]

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Don't Let These Problems Ruin Your Screenplay

Writing visually is not only about crafting words that flow smoothly and evoke vivid imagery. It is also about not including words that detract from that imagery or interrupt the flow. The screenwriter's goal is to create a script in which the writing flows so smoothly the reader becomes part of the story, watching it [...]

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Using White Space to Hold a Reader's Attention

Resisting the urge to include extensive detail when writing a screenplay as you would when writing a novel is a difficult challenge for a screenwriter to overcome. Most writers who choose the screenwriting field do so because they think in film -- they imagine their stories unfolding shot by shot, scene by scene, image by [...]

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Five Ways to Turn Off a Hollywood Script Reader

You may have written the most riveting piece of dramatic work in existence to date. Your dialogue may be perfect. Your characters may seem so real they beg to jump right off the page. Your story may rival those of Oscar-winning screenplays. It might even be so good as to put those stories to shame, [...]

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"How To Think Sideways" course for writers

If you are an aspiring writer, you need to check out Holly Lisle's new writing course, How To Think Sideways: Career Survival School for Writers. It is a six-month class offered entirely online, and it covers an immense range of material. One of the students even referred to it as "grad school for writers", and [...]

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