What goes into writing a great movie script?

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

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

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

Why is India lagging behind China in economic development when India is a democracy while China isn’t?

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

Make sure to pack enough explosives into the rocket.

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.

Deion Sanders gives update on health issues that have kept him home - New York Post

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

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.

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 are some things you do for your form of self-care?

The DSM 5 is a wonderful character compendium.

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

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

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

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

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

Which job has the potential to become rich easily?

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.

Actors give better feedback than writers do.

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.

Why The Simpsons stopped producing Maude Flanders episodes?

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

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

Research the facts and then throw away the research.

How can I get just the vocals of a song?

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

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

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

How rough can the ferry passage from Hull to Rotterdam be in the autumn ( at the end of October )?