Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Don’t even go there! You know as well as I do, I’ve literally been there, done that, bought the t-shirt and to be honest with you at the end of the day when push comes to shove and it all boils down to it if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. Know what I mean? Basically, what I’m trying to say is with all due respect between you and me screenwriting is not rocket science, it’s about breaking the mold, thinking outside the box, giving it 110% 24/7. And I think we can all agree clichés suck but, hey, it’s a job. You gotta do what you gotta do. Just remember you’re writing for an audience and there’s no “I” in . . . you get the picture.

—Definitive List of Cliched Dialogue, Go Into The Story
posted by ob1quixote on Mar 11, 2012 - 114 comments

"Storytelling is inherently dangerous. Consider a traumatic event in your life. Think about how you experienced it. Now think about how you told it to someone a year later. Now think about how you told it for the hundredth time. It's not the same thing. Most people think perspective is a good thing: you can figure out characters arcs, you can apply a moral, you can tell it with understanding and context. But this perspective is a misrepresentation: it's a reconstruction with meaning, and as such bears little resemblance to the event." Charlie Kaufman: Why I Wrote Being John Malkovich. [more inside]
posted by codacorolla on Oct 7, 2011 - 47 comments

Judd Apatow got into an e-mail argument with the creator of That 70s Show back in 2002
posted by The Whelk on May 15, 2011 - 110 comments

Zombie Baby, Fucking Jane Austen, The Last Witch Hunter, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, American Bullshit, Better Living Through Chemistry... just some of the titles that made this year's Black List, a list of the best unproduced screenplays of the year as voted on by industry insiders. LA Times and Deadline Hollywood have pieces on it and here's an October audio interview with Franklin Leonard, creator of the Black List. In past years, aspiring screenwriters could find PDFs of the scripts online. It's gonna be a lot harder now.
posted by dobbs on Dec 13, 2010 - 42 comments

DAVID MAMET LAYS OUT WHAT MAKES GOOD SCREENWRITING.
posted by jjray on Mar 24, 2010 - 171 comments

Robert McKee’s Unconvincing Story
posted by Artw on Nov 14, 2009 - 78 comments

Jane Espenson is a tv writer you might have heard of if you've been watching few science fiction and related genre shows in recent years. For awhile now she's been answering questions about script writing from readers of her blog and gracing the blogosphere with her insights into the craft of writing a good story for tv and movies. Today she announced that she's taking a break from advice blogging because she's running out of new ideas for topics to cover.
posted by Tehanu on Dec 9, 2008 - 9 comments

After a lengthy hiatus, Terry Rossio is once again writing columns on screenwriting and other aspects of the film trade for Wordplayer (previously). New articles include a dissertation on the use of dramatic irony, a fascinating story about a single vacation photo and the strange twists of life, and an insider's look into how good stories get killed, and which battles are worth fighting. [more inside]
posted by Navelgazer on Jul 7, 2008 - 18 comments

An essay by Bill Lawrence, creator of "Scrubs," on why he writes. It's part of a series: "Why We Write." [more inside]
posted by Tehanu on Mar 16, 2008 - 28 comments

Word Into Image: Writers on Screenwriting {youtube}
William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) (1 2 3)
Robert Towne (Chinatown) (1 2 3)
Carl Foreman (High Noon) (1 2 3)
Neil Simon (The Odd Couple) (1 2 3)
Paul Mazursky (An Unmarried Woman) (1 2 3)
Eleanor Perry (The Swimmer) (1 2 3)
posted by dobbs on Feb 22, 2008 - 9 comments

I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing is the new blog by screenwriter Josh Friedman. Not much there yet but what is is fun, especially parts one and two of his adventures with arbitration on War of the Worlds. (Of note: Friedman is the writer who adapted James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia for David Fincher Brian De Palma.) {via The Screenwriting Life}
posted by dobbs on Aug 21, 2005 - 9 comments

The Sweet Smell of Success*. North by Northwest. The Comedian. Sabrina. The King and I. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. The Sound of Music. West Side Story. Somebody Up There Likes Me... What do they have in common? Their screenplays all passed through the typewriter of Academy Award-winning (and 6-time nominee) Ernest Lehman, who died Saturday of a heart attack. He was 89. * html screenplay [via The Screenwriting Life]
posted by dobbs on Jul 6, 2005 - 12 comments

Script-O-Rama! Hundreds and hundreds of film scripts, film transcripts, tv show scripts, and anime scripts.
posted by crunchland on Jul 18, 2003 - 5 comments