Dialogue that is over real can kill your script stone dead – which is just about the opposite of what you think when you start out. Discover the difference between bad real dialogue and great ‘realistic’ dialogue.
People get obsessed with writing their logline. And so they should. It’s a crucial selling aid. I’ve known of at least one long running UK TV show commissioned on a logline. Imagine – a single sentence with that kind of power…?
I called in a few favours, asked around the friends I have who DO write comedy – asked them to put their mind to describing what they do when they write comic dialogue, and they came up with….
Spending a lot of time imagining your character’s back stories and previous lives is time you’ve wasted. In my honest opinion. This flies in the face of so much you read elsewhere, but I’ve always found it to be so. It’s all very well creating all these wonderful people to the nth detail- the minute [...]
OK. How do you write a screenplay? Here’s ten headlines. Ten rules of thumb. Ten stepping stones I follow religiously. Follow them conscientiously in order and you WILL see results. I promise.
The odds are high that your chosen script exec/producer/director will want to see a treatment before they will go anywhere near your screenplay. There are many different ways to write a treatment, but if you follow these 10 simple guidelines you can’t go too far wrong…
Want to adapt a novel? Plenty of films are conceived this way – and they’ve been handing out Oscars for good adaptations for over 80 years. Whether it’s choosing which work to adapt, what to leave out, or which format, here are 10 critical tips to get you started.
OK – so… imagine you’ve finished your first draft, and you’ve left it alone for a couple of weeks so that you can get some perspective on it. I know it’s burning a hole through your desk and you are desperate to hear what people think, but the worst thing you could possibly do at [...]
How do you know what should be done in dialogue, and what should be done in scene description? Here are some solid guidelines. When a Newsletter reader asked me this I stopped in my tracks. It’s a deceptively simple question, but it’s not easy to answer. Not at all. I thought about it. And thought [...]