thefilmstage: A great new video essay counts down the 12 best examples of cinematography in cinema. Watch here. Stunning.  Find 12 minutes. You will get why using your pages for story is way more important than describing static images.

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someladyparts: Class and style.  Ending this bullshit starts with writers. 

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Scriptnotes, 237: Sexy But Doesn’t Know It | A ton of useful information about screenwriting from screenwriter John August

Scriptnotes, 237: Sexy But Doesn’t Know It | A ton of useful information about screenwriting from screenwriter John August Craig (Mazin, talking about character intros): “Well, the standard lines are hard to do well because there are 14 billion screenplays in the world, 99.9 of which are terrible, and they all are chunked with these…

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Writing What You Know

Is fine, to a point, but if you’re an average writer, you’re a terrible protagonist.  Your action will be direct and your conflicts clear when your protagonist is someone completely outside the sphere of how YOU, a writer, would handle the events of the plot. YOU would do what writers do: observe, reflect, process, interpret….

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All That Writing Advice

It’s just one piece of advice. Write an entertaining story in a specific format. Taking a class is worth it. Here’s one I did a hundred years ago, at UCLA Extension which is $555. Or, hell. I’ll teach you that, now that I’m thinking about it. It’s not hard to learn, but it’s a Q&A style…

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Reporting

A reporting scene is when someone comes running in to tell your protagonist that The Boy asked The Other Girl to the prom. As an example. Every time I read one, I want to call the writer on the actual phone, to hear their voice, so I can ask them why they didn’t SHOW this…

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My thing is that most scripts aren’t bad scripts, they’re just not finished yet. Michael Arndt (via scriptwriters-network) That’s my thing, too.

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So, what is a hook?

Was watching the pilot of 11.22.63 and thinking about how it’s the perfect way to describe a hook. Which should give you some idea of how electrifying the script is, but never mind. Here goes… Chris Cooper has a closet in his diner that takes you back in time. He’s dying. He shows this big…

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“Speaking of…”

When you use this dialogue transition as a cheap shortcut to lay out some exposition for me, I turn right into Alison Hendrix. It’s such a bad technique that I lose confidence in the rest of your script. It tells me that for you, dialogue is how the reader finds out about the plot ahead…

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