6 Rules of Screenplay Research
However, if you write stories about something you don’t know from your own perspective and experience, it will feel fake. And that’s the problem I have with a lot of scripts I read. Screenwriters write about gangsters, mobsters, and art dealers, but it’s clear they are just rehashing things they have seen before in movies or TV, so their screenplays sound cliché. That’s why screenplays that take me into a rich, well documented world stand out. For example, last year I read a script written by a Raindance MA student which captured a world I knew nothing about in a visually, compelling way. Although it dealt with lumberjacks in the early days of what was yet to become Ottawa, I felt that it came from a place of authenticity because the characters and world jumped off the page. It turned out that the screenwriter had done a lot of historical research prior to writing the script and it showed.
Many good points made. Also, Raindance is pretty cool in general.