Didactic Archives | Industrial Scripts®

screenwriting electricity in The Silence of the Lambs

8.8

What is “electricity”, in screenwriting terms?

August 2, 2018

On the Special Edition DVD/Blu-Ray for THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, Jodie Foster is interviewed as part of a retrospective. In the interview, Foster explains that a structurally insignificant scene (the one where ...

8.5

What the Most Successful Sports Team Can Teach Screenwriters

Industrial Scripts

July 26, 2018

Articles, Business, Didactic, Inspiring

Learning From the New Zealand All Blacks In the history of organised sports - globally - one team stands alone. The New Zealand All Blacks are the most successful sports team in history, with an astonishing...

8.5

GENIUS CHARACTER REVEALS: R J Macready (THE THING)

Industrial Scripts

February 20, 2018

Articles, Didactic, Film, Genius Character Reveals Analysis

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 o...

8.8

An Ultimate Guide to Screenwriting Etiquette in Film & TV

Industrial Scripts

November 12, 2017

Articles, Business, Didactic, Free Resources

Why You Need a Screenwriting Guide As a new screenwriter, how does one conduct oneself in one of the most competitive industries in the world? It's an important question, and one that so many new screenwriters...

screenwriting contest screenwriting contests

9.4

Why You Shouldn’t “Spray & Pray” In a Screenwriting Contest

Industrial Scripts

September 29, 2017

Articles, Business, Didactic, Film, Opinion

One common feature of professional writers' stories is that there is no single magic route into the industry. Everyone's path is different. Entering a screenwriting contest, or entering a whole host of contests...

7.9

10 Screenwriting Lessons From DEAD MAN’S SHOES (2004)

Industrial Scripts

August 29, 2017

Articles, British Film, Craft, Didactic, Film

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 Anthony (Toby Kebbell). ...

8.9

31 Writing Lessons From Iconic Author Kurt Vonnegut

Industrial Scripts

July 28, 2017

Articles, Classic Quotes, Craft, Didactic

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 ...

9

Which Species of Screenwriter are you?

Industrial Scripts

June 30, 2017

Articles, Craft, Didactic, Film, TV

The 'building-block' nature of screenwriting is such that any screenwriter needs a selection box of varying skills . As you'd expect, different screenwriters tend to find themselves drawn to, and more skilled a...

8.3

Is the Subtle, Theme-rich Screenplay Dead?

Industrial Scripts

April 27, 2017

Articles, Didactic, Film, Opinion

Is the Subtle, Theme-rich Screenplay Dead? Theme-rich Screenplay Treated Unfairly? The plot-light, theme-rich screenplay is often - at the script development stage at least - unfairly maligned with the phrase...

9.4

OPINION: Screenwriters Should Consider the Cinema Experience

Industrial Scripts

March 21, 2017

Articles, Craft, Didactic, Opinion

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 makes the cinema exp...

7.8

Should Screenwriters Write “Omnisciently”?

Industrial Scripts

December 14, 2016

Articles, Craft, Didactic, Investigative

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 that onl...

8.2

10 Screenwriting Lessons From ANGEL HEART (1987)

Industrial Scripts

November 29, 2016

Articles, Craft, Didactic, Film

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 are similarly diverse. ...

8.7

10 Thriller Screenplays You Should Read

Industrial Scripts

November 29, 2016

Articles, Craft, Didactic, Listicles

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 te...

9.1

10 Script Notes You May Choose to Ignore…

Industrial Scripts

November 11, 2016

Articles, Craft, Didactic

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 advice handed out by script consultants at the mu...

6.4

10 Minor Characters Who Still Have a Great ARC

Industrial Scripts

October 31, 2016

Articles, Craft, Didactic

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 Finer Ch...

9.4

Unresolved Plot Threads: Magic or Madness?

Industrial Scripts

October 21, 2016

Articles, Craft, Didactic, Film

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 and the whole film. How do u...

7.8

10 Commandments of the Accountable Screenwriter (Download)

Industrial Scripts

October 3, 2016

Articles, Craft, Didactic, Free Resources, Most Viewed

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 the morning and looks himself in th...

9.7

How to Write “Mythically” but Avoid Cliche – PDF Guide

Industrial Scripts

September 9, 2016

Articles, Craft, Didactic, Free Resources, Most Viewed

Writing mythically with cliché is relatively easy: watch a couple of films, read a couple of books then regurgitate the obvious stuff: quasi-religious story world, the quest, the mentor, initiation, testing, th...

7.3

10 Almost-Great Screenplays

Industrial Scripts

August 31, 2016

Articles, Craft, Didactic, Listicles

An almost-great screenplay can be more frustrating than a really bad one. The potential is strong and the execution is almost there, but something went wrong at the final hurdle. Of course, it's easy to pick...

5.5

15 Genius Inciting Incidents by Screenwriters

Industrial Scripts

August 10, 2016

Articles, Craft, Didactic, Listicles

15 Genius Inciting Incidents by Screenwriters You've created a fully developed character or series of characters and are now pondering their motivation through the narrative you've started to develop. Incit...

8.3

10 Classic Mid-Film Plot Twists by Screenwriters

Industrial Scripts

July 31, 2016

Articles, Craft, Didactic, Listicles

10 Great Mid-Film Plot Twists by Screenwriters Too often when watching a film, especially for those of us who have seen many of them, you can read where the story is going and predict what is going to happen o...

8.4

10 Moments Where Problem Upon Problem Hits the Protagonist

Industrial Scripts

May 24, 2016

Articles, Craft, Didactic, Listicles

Conflict is essential in every great story. The amount and complexity of the situation can obviously vary greatly depending on the scope, settings and characters involved. In some cases, loading problem upon pr...

Ex Machina - Science Fiction Screenplays

7.8

Writing Science Fiction Screenplays

Industrial Scripts

November 25, 2015

Articles, Craft, Didactic, Film, Genre

Writing Science Fiction Screenplays Sci-Fi is one of those odd genres – like the Western – that among script theorists often stimulates more argument about ‘defining your terms’ than it does about structure, p...

Cabin in the Woods - Writing Horror Screenplays

9.8

Writing Horror Screenplays: How to Write Teen Horror

Industrial Scripts

November 17, 2015

Articles, Craft, Didactic, Film, Genre

Writing Horror Screenplays: How to Write Teen Horror From 1974's BLACK CHRISTMAS – rightly credited with being the god-monster of the modern mainstream genre – through to every postmodern twist on the 'final g...

The Exorcist - Writing Horror Screenplays

9

Writing Horror Screenplays: How to Write Occult Horror

Industrial Scripts

November 16, 2015

Articles, Craft, Didactic, Film, Genre

Writing Horror Screenplays: How to Write Occult Horror Occult literally means 'hidden' so all Horror could be described as occult in the sense that all Horror deals with things that are...

7.9

Writing Horror Screenplays: How to Write Supernatural Horror

Industrial Scripts

November 6, 2015

Articles, Craft, Didactic, Film, Genre

Writing Horror Screenplays: How to Write Supernatural Horror Supernatural Horror is perhaps the most writer-friendly of all Horror sub-genres because its effectiveness really does live on the page, rather than...

Yoda is wise, like our screenwriting tips article

7.6

These are the Only Screenwriting Tips Worth Keeping

Industrial Scripts

September 17, 2015

Articles, Craft, Didactic, Film, Listicles, TV

In a giant sea of screenwriting tips and advice, where does one begin? It's almost as bad as dieting these days. Cranberries are bad for you. No, scrap that, we've now decided they're good for you. Your protago...

8.3

10 Fee-Charging Screenwriting Contests, their Likely Profits and Prestige

Industrial Scripts

August 21, 2015

Articles, Business, Didactic, Film, Listicles, TV

You've rewritten, redrafted, typed 'Fade Out' more times than you can count. You're finally satisfied that your script, the one you've poured months maybe even years into writing, is finished. Now what? For ...

9.5

Genius Hitchcock Decisions at Screenplay Stage

Industrial Scripts

July 1, 2015

Articles, Craft, Didactic, Film, Most Shared

What hasn’t been written about Hitchcock already? From Francois Truffaut and Raymond Durgnat, to every casual message board user on IMDb, great swathes of humankind have discussed at length the directorial t...

8.4

Lessons From Timing the Death Sequence in PREDATOR

Industrial Scripts

June 23, 2015

Articles, Craft, Didactic, Film, Investigative, Most Viewed

Way back when... For much of the 80’s and into the 90’s, “Schwarzenegger” was a byword for a movie with a high body count. The box office was peppered with movies such as COMMANDO, TOTAL RECALL and TRUE LIES, ...

6.5

5 Bits of Famous Writing Advice You Should Ignore

Industrial Scripts

May 28, 2015

Articles, Craft, Didactic, Film, Listicles, Opinion, TV

You're no stranger to getting advice if you're a writer. Thousands of books, hundreds of films, and even entire college majors have been dedicated to the art of honing the English language. As a result, there a...

9.4

The Film Producer Salary & A Pocket Full of Dollars

Miranda Fleming

April 20, 2015

Articles, Business, Columnists, Didactic, Film

Let's be blunt about it: the financial outlook isn’t great for Film Producers at the moment. A Film Producer Salary is firmly not what it once was... Miranda Fleming, Head of Film & Creative at Indiegog...

8.8

Cutting Out the Middle Man in Film Distribution

Miranda Fleming

February 26, 2015

Articles, Business, Columnists, Didactic, Film

The Berlin International Film Festival was distinctly different this year. Sure, there was the typical melee of execs taking pictures around remnants of the Berlin Wall. And yes, as per usual, the films ranged ...

8.3

Swerving Development Hell in the New Dawn of Crowdfunding

Miranda Fleming

January 28, 2015

Articles, Business, Columnists, Didactic, Film

Miranda Fleming, Head of UK Film & Creative at Indiegogo Welcome and hello to the thousands of you who visit the IS website every week. By way of an introduction, I’m Miranda Fleming, and I'm thrille...

7.6

Script Reader Jobs: Your Complete Guide

Industrial Scripts

December 23, 2014

Articles, Business, Craft, Didactic, Film, Most Shared, Most Viewed, TV

Like it or lump it, the role of the industry script reader is becoming increasingly important in film and TV. With the volume of scripts being written, increasing year-on-year, the challenge for those in power ...

8.5

How to Write a Screenplay: Your 30-Step Guide

Industrial Scripts

December 19, 2014

Articles, Craft, Didactic, Film, Listicles, Most Shared, TV

How to Write a Screenplay: Your 30-Step Guide. So - you want to learn how to write a screenplay. You think about it constantly. Whenever you watch a movie you annoy your friends, going on about how you c...

6.5

Five Screenwriting Rules You Can Break and Five You Can’t

Tom Williams

November 27, 2014

Articles, Columnists, Craft, Didactic, Most Shared, Most Viewed

Even the notion of screenwriting rules gets some people into a serious tizz, and it's this controversial topic I want to explore this week. I’ve spent the last three weeks watching my new film Kaja...

9.2

My Search for a Screenwriting Truth

Tom Williams

November 8, 2014

Articles, Columnists, Craft, Didactic, Film, Opinion

In Screenwriting, the truth matters... Today we’re going to talk about The Truth. Not this sort of truth. Or this. Or even this. We’re going to talk about the kind of screenwriting truth that connected si...

7.2

What I’ve Learnt about Screenwriting: Part I, The Idea

Tom Williams

October 30, 2014

Articles, Columnists, Craft, Didactic, Film, Opinion, TV

What I've Learnt about Screenwriting: Part 1, The Idea Williams: scribbles hard, scribbles daily. So I've been doing this for a while now, and for some reason I feel a powerful, hubristic, intimations-of-m...

6.2

To Screenwrite Right, Write What You Know

Tamzin Rafn

October 28, 2014

Articles, Columnists, Craft, Didactic, Film, Opinion, TV

Write What You Know or Just Say No! (and other rhymes) I’m going to give you procrastinating scribblers a little bit of advice today. Yes me, who gets up at the crack of 10.30 in the AM and eats really really ...

7.9

Screenplay Format: Your 30-Step Guide

Industrial Scripts

October 22, 2014

Articles, Business, Didactic, Most Shared, TV

Screenplay Format - Your 30-step Guide Before you start writing the next great film, it is essential that you have a comprehensive understanding of screenplay format. It won't matter how amazing your story ...

8.6

Seething With Screenwriting Envy!

Tamzin Rafn

October 4, 2014

Articles, Business, Columnists, Didactic, Opinion

Screenwriting Envy “In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure”. Guess who said that? You never will. It was Bill Cosby! I have spent the past hour trying to...

8.9

The Screenplay & The Mountain

Industrial Scripts

September 26, 2014

Articles, Craft, Didactic, Film, Listicles, TV

The Screenplay. Like some kind of Mordorian tower it looms over the land. We can barely make out the top of it, so shrouded is it in snow, ice and whatever other element that makes things difficult to climb ...

8.2

10 Ways To Irritate a Development Executive

Tamzin Rafn

September 5, 2014

Articles, Business, Columnists, Didactic, Film, Listicles

The Rafn Column Part II 10 Ways to Irritate a Development Executive When I finally made the transition from being a Development Executive to becoming a writer, I believed that I had a genuine advantage becaus...

9.2

10 Honest Quotes about the Life of the Screenwriter

Industrial Scripts

August 28, 2014

Articles, Business, Didactic, Listicles, Most Shared, Most Viewed, Philosophical

Nobody worships more reverently at the altar of screenwriting than us. We believe in The Screenplay. We recognise it as the critical component in whether a film or TV shows lives, or dies. In its own right, ...

Writers Sceptical - Script Hosting Sites

6.6

Why Writers should be Sceptical of Script Hosting sites

Industrial Scripts

August 5, 2014

Articles, Business, Didactic, Film, Listicles, Opinion, TV

Sceptical of Script Hosting Sites "I've barely got enough time for my existing clients, let alone trawling around websites looking for more" - Prominent UK lit agent. Pacino in HEAT - time-poor. We're...

7.7

10 Great Michael Mann Quotes for Screenwriters & Filmmakers

Industrial Scripts

July 30, 2014

Articles, Classic Quotes, Didactic, Film, Hollywood, Listicles

"You work really hard. No you work harder. No you...you...you!" Michael Mann Michael Mann started out writing for TV in the 1970s but made his feature directorial debut with THE JERICHO MILE in 1979. Seve...

6.5

The 10 Hardest Film Genres to Write

Industrial Scripts

July 9, 2014

Articles, Craft, Didactic, Film, Genre, Listicles

Be in no doubt about it - if you’re going to write for the screen, then you’re going to be writing genre. Thriller, sci-fi, crime, fantasy, comedy, horror and so on, everyone wants genre and these days they oft...

7.4

“The Same, but Different” – Screenwriting Tips

Industrial Scripts

June 29, 2014

Articles, Craft, Didactic, Film

How many times have you heard someone describe a film as “it’s something meets something”? Unoriginal, or the keys to producers’ bank vaults? Industrial Scripts examines how to improve your chances of...

8.7

Why The Holy Trinity of Monster Movies are Impossible to Top

Industrial Scripts

June 27, 2014

Articles, Craft, Didactic, Film, Genre, Hollywood, Opinion

With the arrival of GODZILLA at your local multiplex you might be thinking it's time to get writing some monster movies of your own — how hard can it be, right? But while GODZILLA may have roared onto sc...