15 Great Mike Judge Quotes for Writers & Filmmakers
15 Great Mike Judge Quotes After gaining a Physics degree from the University of California, Mike Judge put his science career on hold. The Ecuadorean-born American would go on to …
How-To Guides
“What we can learn from…” type articles.
What is “electricity”, in screenwriting terms?
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 …
What the Most Successful Sports Team Can Teach Screenwriters
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 …
GENIUS CHARACTER REVEALS: R J Macready (THE THING)
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 Ultimate Guide to Screenwriting Etiquette in Film & TV
Why Screenwriting Etiquette is so important… As a new screenwriter, how does one conduct oneself in one of the most competitive industries in the world? It’s an important question, …
10 Screenwriting Lessons From DEAD MAN’S SHOES (2004)
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 …
31 Writing Lessons From Iconic Author Kurt Vonnegut
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 …
Which Species of Screenwriter Are You?
Screenwriter 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, …
Is the Subtle, Theme-rich Screenplay Dead?
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 …
OPINION: Screenwriters Should Consider the Cinema Experience
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 …
Should Screenwriters Write “Omnisciently”?
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 …
10 Screenwriting Lessons From ANGEL HEART (1987)
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 …
10 Thriller Screenplays You Should Read
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 …
How to Give EXPERT Script Notes: 10 ESSENTIAL Tips
No matter what part of the filmmaking process your job role fits within, there’ll likely be a time when you’ll be expected to give script notes on a project. Across …
10 Minor Characters Who Still Have a Great ARC
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 …
Unresolved Plot Threads: Magic or Madness?
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 …
10 Commandments of the Accountable Screenwriter (Download)
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 …
How to Write “Mythically” but Avoid Cliche – PDF Guide
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, …
10 Almost-Great Screenplays
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. …
15 Genius Inciting Incidents by Screenwriters
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. Inciting …
10 Classic Mid-Film Plot Twists by Screenwriters
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 …
10 Moments Where Problem Upon Problem Hits the Protagonist
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 …
Writing Science Fiction Screenplays
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 …
Writing Horror Screenplays: How to Write Teen Horror
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 …
Writing Horror Screenplays: How to Write Occult Horror
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 …
Writing Horror Screenplays: How to Write Supernatural Horror
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 being hostage to practical …
These are the Only Screenwriting Tips Worth Keeping
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 …
10 Fee-Charging Screenwriting Contests, their Likely Profits and Prestige
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. …
Genius Hitchcock Decisions at Screenplay Stage
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 …
Lessons From Timing the Death Sequence in PREDATOR
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 …
5 Bits of Famous Writing Advice You Should Ignore
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 …
The Film Producer Salary & A Pocket Full of Dollars
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… I remember the …
Cutting Out the Middle Man in Film Distribution
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 …
Swerving Development Hell in the New Dawn of Crowdfunding
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 thrilled to be starting this …
Script Reader Jobs: Your Complete Guide
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 increasing year-on-year, the challenge for …
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 …
Five Screenwriting Rules You Can Break and Five You Can’t
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 …
My Search for a Screenwriting Truth
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 …
What I’ve Learnt about Screenwriting: Part I, The Idea
What I’ve Learnt about Screenwriting: Part 1, The Idea So I’ve been doing this for a while now, and for some reason I feel a powerful, hubristic, intimations-of-mortality urge to …
To Screenwrite Right, Write What You Know
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 …
Screenplay Format: Your 30-Step Guide
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 …
Seething With Screenwriting Envy!
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 …
The Screenplay & The Mountain
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 …
10 Ways To Irritate a Development Executive
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 …
10 Honest Quotes about the Life of the Screenwriter
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, …
Why Writers Should be Sceptical of Script Hosting sites
Script Hosting Sites – Friend or Foe? Script hosting sites divide opinion, arguably more than any other screenwriter or filmmaker resource. Maybe it’s the business model which sticks in many …
10 Great Michael Mann Quotes for Screenwriters & Filmmakers
Michael Mann Michael Mann started out writing for TV in the 1970s but made his feature directorial debut with THE JERICHO MILE in 1979. Several films later he finally struck …
The 10 Hardest Film Genres to Write
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 …
“The Same, but Different” – Screenwriting Tips
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 …
Why The Holy Trinity of Monster Movies are Impossible to Top
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, …