How to write screenplay dialogue that sounds authentic
Screenplay dialogue which sounds authentic means writing it like real people speak. Here’s a few quick tips how to do it: Read more
Tips From A Script Reader
How to write interesting characters for your screenplay
Hey. You. Write interesting characters. Yes, I’m talking to you. I said WRITE INTERESTING CHARACTERS. There’s no reason in the world for any screenwriter to force a script reader to read boring characters. None. Let this script reader give you five quick things you can change in your screenplay right … Read more
How to get focused so you can sell your screenplay
“How do I sell my screenplay?” “My screenplay is done. Now what do I do?” “How do I get my script produced?” These are the eternal questions asked by aspiring screenwriters everywhere. But, as you might’ve noticed, get paid for writing for the film and tv industry is not an … Read more
Screenwriter Networking – The Basic Rules
Screenwriter networking is absolutely essential to any screenwriter’s career. People knowing people, referring people, befriending people — without any exaggeration, this is how films and television get made in the film industry. Once more for emphasis: meeting and working with film and tv people is mandatory if you want to make … Read more
How to Write Strong Women Characters
It’s not hard to write strong women characters, but for some reason, poorly written women characters seem to be the default for many screenwriters. I suspect that it’s because most writers have probably absorbed and accepted much more culturally reinforced sexism than they realize. Believe me, we see a lot, … Read more
Become a Better Writer by Playing D&D
Screenwriting and Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). What possibly could a roleplaying game have in common with the century-old art and craft of writing a screenplay for film or television? What on Middle Earth could these two worlds have in common? Believe it or not, there’s actually a Hobbit-ton (pun intended) of overlap … Read more
Review of Script Studio screenwriting app
Script Studio isn’t a screenwriting app. It’s more like a suite of screenwriting apps, all bundled together and, with its full array of powerful writing, editing, planning, outlining, and polishing tools, clearly capable of taking on newbie screenwriters and pro screenwriters alike, and everything in between. Upon first launch, it’s … Read more
How to write better villains
Is the villain in your screenplay reaching his or her fullest, most extraordinary villain self? Or is your villain limited by mundane, mealy-mouthed tropes or other half-baked screenwriting mistakes? It’s time to take charge of your villains, screenwriters! I’m here to help you unlock your villains’ potential, and unleash your … Read more
How To Write Your Script’s Inciting Incident
Somebody once said — I think it might’ve been Mel Brooks — “If your Act 3 doesn’t work, go back and rewrite Act 1.” Every movie and film must start somewhere, right? If the movie doesn’t start, then there’s probably something wrong with the projector. But if the feature-length film … Read more
Fade In Pro Review — Screenplay Readers
Fade In is a screenwriting app in a world full of screenwriting apps. Where there once was only one or two big screenwriting software packages — the venerable Final Draft and Movie Magic Screenwriter — now there are several upstarts, seeking to usurp the de facto Final Draft throne. Enter … Read more
How to write more interesting scenes
Any yo-yo screenwriter can write a scene. But it takes a special kind of yo-yo screenwriter to write a good one. Here are three things you can do right now that will improve the scenes in your screenplays: hone your description, get into your scenes late, and weave in that … Read more
Screenwriting sci-fi or fantasy – How to balance lore with story
Crafting a lush fantasy world is no small feat. Not only does the screenwriter have to concoct a myriad of otherworldly details, she also has to connect us with those details in a meaningful way… Read more
How to write exposition in a screenplay
What makes good screenplay exposition? I compare some exposition in the Raiders of the Lost Ark screenplay with a user-submitted script. Read more
Does Your Script Look Good On Netflix?
Writing for Netflix, and the Netflix / streaming era, is revealing itself to be a different sort of screenwriting. Be kind and rewind with me. Back to the 1980s, when the videocassette rental boom proved beyond a doubt that there was a massive public appetite for all film genres and … Read more
Writing Lessons From GLOW on Netflix
Like all good shows, new Netflix GLOW tv show has a lot to teach tv writers (and screenwriters), aside from being a solid, fun series with a lot of heart. It’s loosely based on the true-life 1980s wrestling tv phenomenon, The Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling – a rogue’s gallery of fierce, … Read more
How to increase your screenplay score and get script readers to love you
There is no surefire way to get a high score on your screenplay, or a RECOMMEND in a script coverage, or even make a script reader like your screenplay. That said, many good screenplays we’ve read over the years here at Screenplay Readers script coverage service tend to have a … Read more
The Screenwriter’s Bill of Rights
With the amount of available outlets for filmed entertainment exploding exponentially each year, the demand for screenwriters at nearly all levels below the “Studio Tentpole Writer Line” grows ever higher. But so does the number of producers and companies jumping into the filmed entertainment sector, at all levels, from Podcasters … Read more
Movie Magic Screenwriter Vs. Final Draft
At Roger Corman’s Concorde-New Horizons Studios in 1997, I opened a script file using Final Draft for the first time. It was on a “Macintosh” because I didn’t call them “Macs” back then. In short, with all due praise to John Hodgman, I was a “PC.” A different kind of … Read more
Improve your script by thinking like a UPM or 1st AD
Screenwriting while keeping a budget in mind isn’t easy, but it can make your writing leaner and meaner, and make your film far easier and cheaper to shoot. Read more
How to get your screenplay under 120 pages
“I loved the movie Django Unchained, but the script was too long…” “The Dark Knight made us millions, but the script was 167 pages, so let’s not do that ever again…” …Said no one ever. Yet, if you’re lucky enough to get your script into the hands of someone who … Read more
How screenwriters can win arguments with producers
With all screenwriters, it happens sooner or later. Eventually, we all get into fights with producers. Creative, financial, it doesn’t matter – if you’re writing screenplays, and you’re at all successful in getting one of your scripts into any sort of development or production pipeline, you’re going to have a … Read more
Review of Highland – John August’s Screenwriting App
Sometimes we screenwriters, we just want to, well, screenwrite. We don’t always enjoy fussing over format or margins or how to make a parenthetical look right or whether or not writing “THE END” should be marked in Final Draft as a slugline/scene heading or an action line or just plain “general.” The … Read more
Writing an elevator pitch for your screenplay
Many of the scripts that come into Screenplay Readers have a lot going for ’em: great dialogue, solid pacing, characters that leap off the page… But sometimes a screenplay can have all those things firing on all those cylinders and still come up a bit short in the RECOMMEND department. Why is that? In … Read more
The 5 Screenwriting Skill Levels – Told in Kung Fu Style
Screenwriters are an unsortable, surly lot. There are as many different flavors of us as there are soldiers in the Terracotta Army, or bricks in the Great Wall of China, and frankly, I wouldn’t have it any other way. But sometimes, we like to have an idea of where the heck … Read more
8 Screenwriting Lessons from “Halt and Catch Fire”
If I were an executive over at AMC, I’d be a little nervous. What, with Mad Men and Breaking Bad all wrapping up, and to mention the producers of The Walking Dead talking about moving the show more towards a Cop Rock vibe and all. It’s a general truism for we in the screenwriting class (or at least, … Read more
How screenwriters can write more and write faster
Out of the 500 or so friends and family I have in my life, approximately 498 of them are screenwriters. And of those 498, exactly one of them actually writes screenplays. The rest just want to. Real hard. Yet they don’t, because they let everything else become more important, more distracting. Wait! SQUIRREL! … Read more
5 Quick Ways to Get a Script Reader to Love Your Script
As Sun Tzu once said, “There are good screenwriters, and there are bad screenwriters.” And while much of the difference between the two can only be measured with abstract criteria (such as “talent,” and “chutzpah,” and “originality,”) the fact is, there are several key criteria good screenwriters do with their screenplays that are not only concrete, … Read more
How do I make my script funnier?
Making your script funnier is not easy. Handing a screenplay to someone and telling them it’s funny is easy. But making them laugh as they read it? That’s an entirely different kind of flying altogether. The word “funny” has a lot of different interpretations, but in the filmmaking profession, the … Read more
How to fail as a screenwriter
When asked what was the best way for an aspiring starlet to get into Hollywood, the legendary Bette Davis once famously replied “Take Fountain.” Her advice remains evergreen today, only now there are also a myriad other ways for starlets and screenwriters like us to “get into Hollywood,” so speak — … Read more
Writing an “audience draft” to kick your script in the pants
Is your screenplay about the audience? Or is it all about you? My company has read a lot of scripts. Thousands. Hundreds of thousands! (Okay, well, not hundreds of thousands, yet.) Good scripts, bad scripts, mediocre scripts. And they’ve all had their positives and minuses. And super-minuses. But there’s one major … Read more
