What goes into writing a great movie script?

Primary characters must change polarities. Secondary characters can change less.

Make sure to pack enough explosives into the rocket.

Don’t direct from the page. Everyone, from the director on down, wants to be part of the process of making movies. Let them do their work.

Are there any Hollywood celebrities who never divorced? Why does it seem like celebrities are likely to get divorced frequently?

Get up there yourself. Be in a movie. Take some acting (not writing) classes. Learn how a trained actor approaches a text. Learn why actors take roles. They do as much if not more than the writer does.

Outline everything. Use story beats. Keep character’s mouths taped up, until they absolutely MUST speak. Write the script and the dialogue at the last minute, after you’ve revised the hell out of the outline.

What you leave unwritten is as important as what you write. SUBTEXT.

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Only God gets it right the first time. Rewrite everything.

A scene should change valence from beginning to end. Up to down, down to up.

Conflict is your power source; without it you have no drama and hence no script.

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Audiences are smarter than you think. Something about turning down the house lights makes their IQs go up.

A critical function of storytelling is wish fulfillment. This is why video games are so popular. “That protagonist is JUST LIKE ME.”

People choose what to see based on the high concept. Make sure to deliver an ending consistent with the high concept -- it is what the audience paid for.

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Your primary job is to create situations. Modern actors will fuck up your dialogue, despite whatever your contract says.

The DSM 5 is a wonderful character compendium.

Actors give better feedback than writers do.

Why do entitled people demand that I pick up after my doggo when he goes to the bathroom? Do they not know that doggy doo decomposes & feeds the plants?

Learn to tell a story orally and not through writing. Try telling your story to a friend.

Write in reverse time. Major characters need to change polarity; minor characters may remain the same at the end.

All rules are made to be broken, but you damn well better know WHY you’re breaking them.

Why do Democrats never produce a good argument for why Trump was a bad president?

To develop a unique voice for each character, try interviewing your characters.

Research the facts and then throw away the research.

Use status to help drive conflict. King Lear/fool. Upstairs/downstairs.

What percent of "being a good programmer" is due to expertise in the syntax of a language(s)? Could you have mastered syntax and still be a bad programmer; or, conversely, be a great programmer with only a fundamental handle on syntax?

Cut everything that is not a payoff, or a setup for a specific payoff. “Omit needless words.” Think about the sparseness of joke telling, or Grimm Brothers.

Leave holes. Write and unwrite. Put it in, take it out.

Maintain a slush pile/idea file. When you are ready to write, choose the best seeds to plant.

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