What goes into writing a great movie script?

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

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

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

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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.

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.

My grandmother deeded me her house before she passed last year. Her son still lives there refusing to move. What steps should I take to have him removed?

Actors give better feedback than writers do.

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

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.

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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.

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

Do you agree that firearms are the most common weapon used in homicides of spouses, intimate partners, children or relatives? Should this data influence gun control policies?

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

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.

When have you been in an accident where the other person involved blatantly lied to the police about what transpired?

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.

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

Research the facts and then throw away the research.

Why are we explaining today’s “climate change” as driven by human related “green house” gasses when natural “global warming” pushed sea level up to the “shores” of Topeka with no human contribution or even presence? Is Occam’s Rasor applied?

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.

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

How do military families balance personal political views with respect for civilian leadership?

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

The DSM 5 is a wonderful character compendium.

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.

What can I do to deal with disrespectful children?