What goes into writing a great movie script?

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

Actors give better feedback than writers do.

Research the facts and then throw away the research.

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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.

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

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

When you visit a store, do you go to shop or buy?

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

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

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.

Has anyone experienced an out of the body experience, as a child, years before you had ever heard the term or understood the implications?

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

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

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.

I am married for 3 years. My husband keeps pressing my boobs 40-50 times a day. He never stops though I ask him not to. What I should do to stop it?

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

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

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

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Make sure to pack enough explosives into the rocket.

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

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.

Is there anything you did that you regret? If so, what is it, and why?

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

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

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

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The DSM 5 is a wonderful character compendium.

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.

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

How many Russians really understand the state they live in?