Craft-based articles.
Jordan Peele, one half of the sketch comedy duo KEY & PEELE, burst onto the cinema scene with the highly acclaimed and successful “social thriller” GET OUT, which he wrote …
Read more10 Jordan Peele Quotes Writers and Directors Can Learn From
In our Genius Character Reveals series we examine scenes and moments where a film or TV show reveals a tremendous amount of character information in a compressed amount of screen …
An odd trend in cinema surfaced in the 1990s and continued into the 2000s. A spate of teen films relocated the plots of William Shakespeare plays to high schools. O …
Read moreOPINION: Lessons from Shakespeare For Screenwriters
A genre hybrid, a cross between two or more genres, can be a boon. It’s giving the audience something familiar, tapping into genre conventions, but also fresh. However, it can …
In our Genius Character Reveals series we examine scenes and moments where a film or TV show reveals a tremendous amount of character information in a compressed amount of screen …
Read moreGENIUS CHARACTER REVEALS: Luke Skywalker (STAR WARS)
In our Genius Character Reveals series we examine scenes and moments where a film or TV show reveals a tremendous amount of character information in a compressed amount of screen …
Read moreGenius Character Reveal: Rebecca Bunch (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend)
Screenwriter and director Dee Rees’ debut feature film PARIAH was met with positive critical acclaim and since then, her Emmy Award-winning HBO series BESSIE and her feature film MUDBOUND have impressed …
Read more15 Inspiring Dee Rees Quotes for Writers & Filmmakers
In our Genius Character Reveals series we examine scenes and moments where a film or TV show reveals a tremendous amount of character information in a compressed amount of screen …
Read moreGENIUS CHARACTER REVEALS: Theo Faron (CHILDREN OF MEN)
Writing great dialogue is difficult, but one way to get a step closer is through the use of subtext. Subtext, literally what is below the text, is the deeper implication behind …
There’s a great quote from F. Hauser and R. Reich that states: “In all the best material, the outcome is inevitable and inherent in the opening moment and every moment …
With the dominance of superhero and tentpole films, sometimes it seems like there’s no place in cinema for everyday heroes. Most audiences don’t want their reality simply reflected back to them. However, …
Read moreWhy Screenwriters Should Tell Stories about Everyday Heroes
In our Genius Character Reveals series we examine scenes and moments where a film or TV show reveals a tremendous amount of character information in a compressed amount of screen …
History is, to gently mutilate a great quote, often stranger than fiction, which is what makes it such a great basis for fiction. Of course, mining history for a solid …
Read moreHow to Mine History & the Real World for Your Next TV Script
‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ It’s the question that gets a ripple of groans at any Q&A session, and an answer comprising a shrug and escorting the asker …
Read more10 Inspired Ways Writers Came Up With Classic Movies
In our Genius Character Reveals series we examine scenes and moments where a film or TV show reveals a tremendous amount of character information in a compressed amount of screen …
Read moreGENIUS CHARACTER REVEALS: Hans Landa (INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS)
DEAD MAN’S SHOES (2004) DEAD MAN’S SHOES follows Richard (Paddy Considine), a soldier who returns to his home town to get revenge on the men who abused his mentally-challenged brother …
Read more10 Screenwriting Lessons From DEAD MAN’S SHOES (2004)
THE INSIDER INTERVIEWS: MATT ORTON The Insider Interviews series started in 2010 as a set of recorded interviews, featuring the likes of Tom Hiddleston, Gareth Unwin, who produced THE KING’S …
There’s a famous piece of screenwriting advice that “if you want to send messages, use Western Union.” Now it might go, “if you want to send messages, Tweet about it.” …
In our Genius Character Reveals series we examine scenes and moments where a film or TV show reveals a tremendous amount of character information in a compressed amount of screen …
Cinematic Scenes of People, Arguing and/or Laughing It sounds like a dull writing exercise. Put your characters in a room and see what happens, arguing or laughing. But here are …
Read more10 Cinematic Scenes of People, Arguing and/or Laughing
31 Writing Lessons From Iconic Author Kurt Vonnegut With his deceptively simple prose style, novelist, playwright and essayist Kurt Vonnegut, jr. (1922 – 2007) bridged sci-fi and literary fiction. Novels like …
Read more31 Writing Lessons From Iconic Author Kurt Vonnegut
The ‘building-block’ nature of screenwriting is such that any screenwriter needs a selection box of varying skills. As you’d expect then, different screenwriters tend to find themselves drawn to, and …
Is it possible to have a film that tells a story without conflict? Conventional wisdom would say no. However, this doesn’t mean that every film needs a world-ending threat. Not every film …
Read moreOPINION: The Perks & Pitfalls of Low Stakes Screenplays
In our Genius Character Reveals series we examine scenes and moments where a film or TV show reveals a tremendous amount of character information in a compressed amount of screen time. This instalment focuses on Conor, a.k.a. …
Read moreGENIUS CHARACTER REVEALS: Cosmo Lawlor (SING STREET)
A character sacrifice is a difficult moment to get right. Audiences today are incredibly cine-literate. They’ve seen it all before, and can tell when a film or TV show has used …
In our Genius Character Reveals series we examine scenes and moments where a film or TV show reveals a tremendous amount of character information in a compressed amount of screen time. This month’s instalment focuses on FBI …
There’s an old Hollywood saying to writers that if you want to send a message, use Western Union. The idea is that audiences want films to entertain them, not to …
Read moreOPINION: When Screenwriters Should Unsettle Audiences
In this series we look at scenes and moments where a film or TV show has revealed a great deal of character information in a short amount of screen time. …
Read moreCharacter Reveal: Minnie Goetze The Diary of a Teenage Girl
Stirring Interest If a story doesn’t pose a dramatic question, you’re probably reading a shopping list. Story questions are the narrative equivalent of a sales pitch, the means by which …
It’s a cliché, but the entertainment industry is an industry. Show business is a business. It behoves screenwriters to remember this and to consider why write films in the first place. What …
Read moreOPINION: Screenwriters Should Consider the Cinema Experience
In this series we look at scenes and moments where a film or TV show has revealed a great deal of character information in a short amount of screen time. …
Read moreGENIUS CHARACTER REVEALS: Tom Reagan (MILLER’S CROSSING)
A major problem with crafting convincing children and teenage characters is that as we grow up it’s too easy to forget what it’s like to be young. Whether a project …
One of the major exceptions to the oft-repeated “show, don’t tell” screenwriting rule is the equally common received wisdom that screenplays should avoid using flashbacks. The criticisms are familiar from scores …
Read moreOPINION: Flashbacks and the (Rare) Stories that Need Them
In this series we look at scenes and moments where a film or TV show has revealed a great deal of character information in a short amount of screen time. …
Read moreCharacter Reveal: Ricky Baker (Hunt For The Wilderpeople)
There are, broadly speaking, two ways to convey conflict: implicitly and explicitly. The former involves illustrating some kind of dissonance through setting, silence, the way one character looks at another. …
Read moreThe Genius, Multi-Conflict Opening of THE GODFATHER PART 2
In this series we look at scenes and moments where a film or TV show has revealed a great deal of character information in a compressed amount of screen time. In …
Like much of Paul Thomas Anderson’s work, the BOOGIE NIGHTS screenplay has an odd structure, divergent POV and a hefty length, yet every page of it is full of worthwhile …
Read more10 Screenwriting Lessons We Can Learn from…BOOGIE NIGHTS (1997)
To write omnisciently as a screenwriter often entails, for better or worse, including elements that may never show up onscreen: jokes in descriptions or insights into characters’ thoughts and histories …
ANGEL HEART Alan Parker’s ANGEL HEART is an odd blend of genres, taking noir, psychological thriller and horror to a three-way shotgun wedding. The screenwriting lessons it can teach us …
Thriller Screenplay Power As a genre, ‘thriller’ tends to gently caress several others, namely horror, sci-fi, and drama. As such, thriller screenplays provide a goldmine of various narrative and structural …
While first and third acts pose their own challenges, it’s in the weeds of the second act that many scripts (and movies for that matter) go astray. Introducing a second …
Read moreWhy Screenwriters Should Consider a Second Act Subplot
In this series we look at scenes and moments where a film or TV show has revealed a great deal of character information in a short amount of screen time. …
Whilst advocating the deflection of script notes may be a strange thing for a dedicated script consultancy to do, the truth is that there is a great deal of bad …
One facet of screenwriting which causes writers enormous headaches is conveying a lot with a little. Studying great minor characters is one way of learning this kind of efficiency. Minor Characters To …
In this series we look at scenes and moments where a film or TV show has revealed a great deal of character information in a short amount of screen time. …
Read moreGENIUS CHARACTER REVEALS: Jim Donovan (BRIDGE OF SPIES)
Endings are crucial. The feeling an ending gives an audience is the feeling they leave the cinema with. It’s the feeling that will colour their perception of their whole experience …
There are two kinds of rugby player”, the legendary Scottish coach Jim Telfer told his players, “there are the honest ones, and there’s the rest. The honest player gets up in …
Read more10 Commandments of the Accountable Screenwriter (Download)
In 9/10 cases the protagonist is the driving force of a successful film narrative. We invest in their story because we identify with their goal and become invested in it; …
Read more10 Films That Make You Invested in The Protagonist’s Goal
In this series we look at scenes and moments where a film or TV show has revealed a great deal of character information in a compressed amount of screen time. Writer-director …
Films that are set in the past are often judged for their authenticity. The “goofs” section of IMDb is overrun with anachronisms: this porcelain wasn’t made until six years later; or …
Read moreOPINION: Screenplay Anachronisms Can Bring the Past to Life