Quick Tips for Screenwriting

Some quick tips:

• Write every single day. The single most important thing a writer can do to improve their writing is simply to WRITE.
• Read screenplays - produced screenplays, unproduced screenplays, world-class screanplays, utter garbage screenplays… just read a crap-ton of other screenplays.
• Expand your life experience. Make a practical, intentional habit of doing new things, learning new things, seeing new things.
• Embrace failure. Dare to suck.
• Take classes; watch videos; read guru books; become a human sponge for all possible screenwriting instruction.
• Write every single day. The single most important thing a writer can do to improve their writing is simply to WRITE.
• A lot of aspiring screenwriters HATE this piece of advice, but: start shooting your own movies. Make little bits for YouTube. Try to make a feature, and watch it go horribly wrong. Every writer I’ve ever talked to who has gone into production on their own script agrees that having to translate those words into a compelling moving picture story taught them more about the process, and about their own strengths and weaknesses, than pretty much anything else they’d ever done as a writer.
• Recognize that a screenplay is a blueprint, not a finished product. It needs to have certain technical elements correct. A great script can get sold and made that is technically imperfect, but it had better be a damn great script. Meanwhile, when people bitch about the rubbish at the cinemas these days, I can promise you most of those “horrible” scripts were at least technically competent, making them easier to turn into movies. You don’t have to choose between “great” and “competent” - so do both.
• Recognize that moviemaking is a collaborative process, much like building a house from a blueprint. So meeting people, building relationships, learning how to play well with others - all of these are crucial skills that don’t come naturally to most writers. (We like being holed up alone in our caves punching the keyboard most of all!)
• Write every single day. The single most important thing a writer can do to improve their writing is simply to WRITE.

1. Develop a full story, not just an idea for one, before starting to write a screenplay.
2. Think in terms of goals for your characters, even the secondary ones. Long term story goals. Short term goals. Conflicting goals.
3. Don’t give your main character what they want; steer them to what they need. That’s their character’s arc.
4. Conflict in every possible scene. A genuine clash, affecting the story, not banter posing as conflict.
5. Don’t be afraid of theme. It doesn’t require profound insight. It’s just why you are saying that these choices lead to that outcome. It will come into focus as you write.
6. Don’t overdo backstory; it’s just exposition. Choices made now, dilemmas faced during conflict, are what defines a character.
7. Dilemmas are better than obvious choices. If we already know what the character will do, why even watch?
8. Don’t obsess over your opening scene. Amateurs do this. It will change as your theme develops.
9. Rewrite until there is nothing that can’t be removed.