Screenwriting Tips

Q: What do you think makes a great antagonist? Do they always have to have a legit reason (at least to them) of why they are doing bad things? Is it as simple as having a few quirks that people [...]

When people write loglines or a “premise test,” they often write one that misses the meat of the story. Stories aren’t just about the setup of an idea, it’s about the execution of [...]

When I’m coaching a client, I usually run into some version of this conversation:

Story coaching is the best, most efficient way to get better as a writer. It begins when a writer hires me for a specific project. They’ll tell me what they want to accomplish and [...]

Question: Should I write a Story Map before I begin writing a draft? Answer: Sure, if you can. But you’re going to run into a problem. If you can’t tell your story in 75 words, you [...]

Story Maps are one of the greatest resources on ScreenplayHowTo. They provide a great way for a novice writer to get a handle on the many moving parts and information that’s included with a [...]

Being a screenwriter isn’t just about writing a screenplay. You also need to know how to write other important stuff like treatments, synopses, one-pagers, and loglines.

If you’ve ever read a book on screenwriting, you’ve probably heard that adding camera movements to your script is a no-no. The reason for this is simple: novice writers overuse camera movements [...]

The majority of screenwriting books tell you that you should avoid using CUT TO: between scenes because it reeks of amateurish writing and quite frankly, it’s obvious that to go from one scene in [...]

For every successful screenwriter, there’s a unique story of how he or she made it over the wall. Each one is different, and no one’s journey can be duplicated by anyone else. Some had parents in [...]