Best 77 quotes in «screenwriting quotes» category

It's possible for me to make a bad movie out of a good script, but I can't make a good movie from a bad script.

Songwriting and screenwriting aren't that different to me.

[Making movies is] 80% script and 20% getting great actors. There's nothing else to it.

I've always been a writer, I've always been a storyteller, but I never thought about screenwriting.

Once you crack the script, everything else follows.

As a screenwriter - if you are completely honest with yourself - you can’t help but admit that your greatest threat is the audience, where audience is not understood as a demographic category but as a character outside the script to whom the story is addressed. A good part of the drama necessary for uncovering the story resides in the conflict between the storyteller and his/her audience. Audience plays the part of antagonist to the writer’s role as protagonist. The writer drives the action, which is forever complicated, frustrated and undermined by the audience’s needs and sensibilities. Audience wants you to prove it. Audience has a chip on its shoulder, and doesn’t give a damn. Audience has been there and done that in the guise of your mother, your father, your ex-, your worst enemy. Audience laughs at your stupidity and dares you to change its view of you and the story world that you would have it care about. Audience is defiant. It has your number. The only way you can defeat it is by carrying a bigger stick - your only defence is an inspired offence, namely the story.

All tales, then, are at some level a journey into the woods to find the missing part of us, to retrieve it and make ourselves whole. Storytelling is as simple - and complex - as that. That's the pattern. That's how we tell stories.

Comfort yields complacency. Break free.

As a writer, you're the guy in the box. You're creating and you have these euphorias.

As screenwriters, we rip open our chests and bleed onto our work. Infusing it with our very souls.

Collaborating on a film script involves two people sitting in a room separated by the silence of two minds working together.

Everyone has their truth. Mine lies in the cinema.

Do you want it good or Tuesday?

Greatness is achieved through kindness, compassion, and love.

Don’t just see brilliance… Feel it.

Don't just write a strong female protagonist. Be one.

[G]reat stories communicate simple truths that reflect the poetic dimensions of the human soul. Not only do powerful characters help us understand our lives, their stories reflect our core values as human beings.

If the story you're telling, is the story you're telling, you're in deep shit.

Her words dance on the page.

If you don’t think screenwriting is a work of art, good luck in your life without a soul.

In prose, when you wrote something, it's symphonic… There's something ethereal in that process that's euphoric.

I read a few of those books on how to write a screenplay, but, just like I told you with the school thing, once again, most of those books are written by someone who’s never written a good script. You look at the writer’s credits and they’ve written one episode of The Golden Girls or something. People who write good scripts, write scripts. They don’t write books about writing scripts.

Karl Marx: "Religion is the opiate of the masses." Carrie Fisher: "I did masses of opiates religiously.

Intuition is truth.

It's a great euphoria when you reach that writing zone.

Is every writer's keyboard a spill magnet?

Love awakens the soul.

Love is written by the soul.

I think, because…well, I like the idea of coming up with a story that never existed before, but I don’t really want to be in charge. I don’t want to be famous. I guess I like the idea of sitting in the dark and knowing that I created the thing on screen, that it’s my story, but, like, no-one else has to know it was me. Does that make sense?

It's when you feel worse, that's when your character comes out and the last thing you want to do is quit.

Love is alive when there's music in your heart.

Makebelieve is a writer's best friend.

Novelist by day; screenwriter by night.

Nowadays films and television are what I like to call "Microwave Media". I like mine in the oven, giving the production time to simmer; get the juices flowing, and cooked to perfection. And that takes time. Slow, precious, tempered time. A script is a film's recipe. It's just a piece of paper to the novice cook, but even a recipe needs time to be perfected before it's given to the masses.

Outside the cinema I had not yet learned to live, but within it I had most certainly learned to die. I could die for you in every way known to man, and in a few ways known only to scriptwriters. I could see now that provided that I remained fit, the future held many more deaths yet. I could only hope that they would serve some purpose, and that perhaps a reputation may come in the same way as a coral formation, which is made up of a deposit of countless tiny corpses.

Peace is when we look upon the world together.

One of the worst parts about working in entertainment is that there’s so much you’re expected to have seen. Oh, you’re a screenwriter? You’ve seen the new Batman, then, right? I’m watching this show on Amazon, right now, and oh my god, it’s so good—but I’m sure you’ve already seen it. The reality is, I’m usually so busy on my own work, I rarely have time to see anything that isn’t required for some kind of voting.

Plays are nearly always about the consequences of events while films are usually about the events. The what-happens-next factor is essential in film.

Screenwriting is made of brevity.

Storytelling answers questions and solves mysteries.

Storytelling is inherently dangerous. Consider a traumatic event in your life. Think about how you experienced it. Now think about how you told it to someone a year later. Now think about how you told it for the hundredth time. It's not the same thing. Most people think perspective is a good thing: you can figure out characters' arcs, you can apply a moral, you can tell it with understanding and context. But this perspective is a misrepresentation: it's a reconstruction with meaning, and as such bears little resemblance to the event.

The answer to the question, 'where's the drama?' is another question: 'what's the problem?

The Hollywood process is a living thing and you get used to that.

... the midpoint of each film is the moment when each protagonist embraces for the first time the quality they will need to become complete and finish their story. It's when they discover a truth about themselves.

The personal screenplay- where you dive into the terrifying depths of your soul, unearth the most intimate details about yourself, and put it on paper for the world to see. Proceed with caution, for madness lies ahead.

Of all the most devastating sounds in the universe, silence is the most powerful.

people don't really want original stories. they want different versions of the same story. this is called meta-narrative.

Screenwriting is like poker; in the end, you have to go all in.

Shit, you shoot me in a dream, you better wake up and apologize.

Simply by eliminating description, the screenwriter can work his way through the entire plot in a single morning, leaving the afternoon free for screenwriter leisure activities such as drugs.