Screenwriting From Iowa

“Always and consciously, I try to hook the audience in the first five minutes. I want them right from the start to feel something—BOOM! I want an explosion right at the beginning. I always what that. Gene Wilder So I’m getting in the Christmas spirit this year and thinking about giving away around 100 books [...]

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“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy…” The Shining (A Stephen King story) Iowa is getting blanketed in a snow storm today. About ten inches of show has fallen in the last 12 hours with wind gusts measured  over 40 mph. I took the above photo this morning at my house and it [...]

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 ”You’d be hard pressed to remember dialogue in some of the great pictures that you’ve seen. That’s why pictures are so international. You don’t have to hear the dialogue in an Italian movie or a French movie. We’re watching the film so that the vehicle is not the ear or the word, it’s the eye. [...]

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“Generally, the shorter the period of time depicted, the more intense the drama. The longer the period of time depicted on a film, the more chance there is that its narrative line will become episodic, making it difficult to keep the film flowing.” Linda Seger Advanced Screenwriting Page 33 The great Milton Glaser once said, [...]

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“I would say just start writing. You’ve got to write every day. Copy someone that you like if you think that perhaps could become your sound too. I did that with Hemingway, and I thought I was writing just like Hemingway. Then all of a sudden it occurred to me, he didn’t have a sense [...]

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“One of the questions I am always asking when I’m writing is ‘How can I show it rather than say it?’ Characters are best defined through action, and in screenwriting in particular it is very important to find visual ways to convey character because, with the exception of voice-over, it is very difficult to get [...]

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“Coincidence may mean exposition is in the wrong place, i.e. if you establish the too-convenient circumstances before they become dramatically necessary, then we feel no sense of coincidence. Use coincidence to get your characters into trouble, not out of trouble.” Writer/director Alexander Mackendrick (Sweet Smell of Success, The Ladykillers) On-Filmmaking: An Introduction to the Craft of [...]

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“A week later [my agent] called with news that the folks at Starsky and Hutch had read my screenplay and didn’t think I had what it took to work on the show. I told my agent I was on page 108 of my new script and he should not to anything rash. I’d call him [...]

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“When I first started to write novels while running a magazine, I told myself that I would only write for 15 minutes a day. I knew that working for a short amount of time was an achievable goal, and I managed to get 10 books written just this way.” Kate White Former editor in chief [...]

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When I took the tour last week of the childhood home of writer/composer Meredith Willison (The Music Man) I learned that he wasn’t the only writer in the family. His sister Dixie was a novelist and screenwriter. And it’s not just that sehe sold some books and earned some IMDB credits, she actually influenced on [...]

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