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.

Make sure to pack enough explosives into the rocket.

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.

Fred Smith, FedEx’s billionaire founder and CEO, dies at 80 - The Washington Post

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

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.

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

The largest black hole jet ever discovered is three times bigger than the Milky Way - Boy Genius Report

Research the facts and then throw away the research.

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

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

Why does Christianity push reconciliation after a partner cheats? Mine had a 7-year affair with someone half my age. He cheated and lied. He is not the same to me.

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

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.

Actors give better feedback than writers do.

Men are more likely than women to die of broken heart syndrome, study finds - CNN

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

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

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

Laudantium rerum sunt ipsa minima corporis exercitationem cupiditate.

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

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

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

Illum autem fuga doloremque est quod delectus id.

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

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

The DSM 5 is a wonderful character compendium.

What caused the Democratic Party's 2024 presidential campaign to implode so horrifically?

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.

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.

Stopping alcoholism gets smarter with smartwatches - The Brighter Side of News