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.

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

I'm very lucky. I actually like screenwriting. I rarely feel a sense of doom going to my desk.

I see screenwriting as a bit like a math equation which I have to solve.

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.

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

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.

Once you crack the script, everything else follows.

Songwriting and screenwriting aren't that different to me.

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

Comfort yields complacency. Break free.

Don’t just see brilliance… Feel it.

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

Do you want it good or Tuesday?

Everyone has their truth. Mine lies in the cinema.

Greatness is achieved through kindness, compassion, and love.

[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.

Her words dance on the page.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Is every writer's keyboard a spill magnet?

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 a great euphoria when you reach that writing zone.

Intuition is truth.

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

Love awakens the soul.

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

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

Love is written by the soul.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Screenwriting is made of brevity.

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

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.

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 biggest difference between writing a movie and writing a novel? No one ever tries to sleep with me to get into one of my novels.

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