Screenwriting From Iowa

Cedar Falls, Iowa gave me a proper send off this morning as several inches fell on my Durango before I could head south. On Sunday we had an ice storm, on Monday we had a thunderstorm, today we had  snow storm, and if all goes right with my trip I’ll be in sunny 70 degree [...]

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“Because I have a son who’s had some of these emotional situations I immediately related to [the novel Silver Linings Playbook] otherwise I never would have. And I said, what a wonderful story, and a wonderful world that is tragic, heartbreaking, emotional, and ultimatley funny and uplifting….While I was waiting the five years to make [...]

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“I’ve overcome the blow, I’ve learned to take it well…” Jim Croce/Operator “Rainy day people all know there’s no sorrow they can’t rise above…” Gordon Lightfoot/ Rainy Day People Perhaps the reason I decided to start a post about the movie Silver Linings Playbook with a couple lines from seventies songs is the movie has [...]

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“Find a strong-willed character with a nothing-will-stand-in-my-way determination to reach his or her goal confronting strong opposition, add a strong action line, keep throwing obstacles (conflicts) in his or her path, and you’re well on your way to a gripping screenplay.” William Froug “START, EVERY TIME, WITH THIS INVIOLABLE RULE: THE SCENE MUST BE DRAMATIC. IT MUST START [...]

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As this blog Screenwriting from Iowa…and Other Unlikely Places enters into its sixth year this week here’s a fitting thought from the always informative blog Go Into the Story: “Assuming you’re not a native Californian or a long-time transplant to L.A., you developed your writing voice elsewhere. Iowa, New Jersey, England, Norway, wherever. The sum of [...]

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“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.” President John F. Kennedy “I have a tendency to go places where I want to go without knowing where that’s going to take me.” Academy & Emmy Winning Director/Actor Kevin Costner When [...]

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“It always comes down to the script. Write a great one, you can be a zillion years old living in Antarctica and Hollywood will want you.” Scott Myers Go Into the Story Thank you. Today marks the fifth anniversary of the blog Screenwriting from Iowa…and Other Unlikely Places, and I’d like to thank you for reading [...]

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“HOLLYWOOD is easy to hate, easy to sneer at, easy to lampoon.” Raymond Chandler’s essay Writers in Hollywood published in the Atlantic in 1945 I’m going to go out on a limb and say that novelist/screenwriter Raymond Chandler (The Big Sleep, Double Indemnity) was not in a happy place when he wrote the essay  Writers in [...]

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“Here’s to plain speaking and clear understanding.” Sydney Greenstreets’s character in The Maltese Falcon Based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett  “Hammett  made the detective story fun to write, not an exhausting concatenation of insignificant clues.” Raymond Chandler Just as Raymond Chandler influenced other writers, other writers influenced him.  And one of those writers was Dashiell Hammett [...]

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“I had no notion of becoming a writer,” is how writer Walter Mosley describes his life before reading the following two sentences: “He was looking at me and neither his eyes nor his gun moved. He was as calm as an adobe wall in the moonlight.” The Long Goodbye, written by Raymond Chandler “It took Raymond [...]

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