What goes into writing a great movie script?

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.

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

Make sure to pack enough explosives into the rocket.

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

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.

Actors give better feedback than writers do.

Is it appropriate for parents to discipline their child in public if the child is being rude, disrespectful, and unruly towards them? Why or why not?

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.

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.

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

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

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.

What would happen if Kakashi and Naruto switched places?

Research the facts and then throw away the research.

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

The DSM 5 is a wonderful character compendium.

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

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

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

Why is the French way to say please is "S'il te plaît" and not "Pour Favour" like Spanish and Portuguese "Per Favor" and Italian "Per Favore" in the Romance languages group?

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.

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

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

“Not every game is for every single person. Sometimes you have to pick a lane” - The Outer Worlds 2’s director on meaningful role-playing consequence and banning respec - RPG Site

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

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

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

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