If you write from the heart, you’ll never run out of ideas. If you aim for masterpieces, at least you’ll learn from the failures. And if you never give up, there’s no way you can lose.
You’ve come this far. Now the future is up to you.
All you have to do is write it.
Pick and choose which elements of your sci-fi world to expand on. The audience needs to know that everyone now has HUDs in their eyeballs and can teleport at will. They probably don’t need to know about society’s incredible advances in park maintenance.
“He grabs the gun that is holstered at his side”. So is it at his side or in his hand? Unholstered or not? You may think you’re being clear, but one slightly confusing sentence can trip up a whole scene.
Don’t put stupid things on your title page, i.e. the number of drafts, multiple home addresses, your Skype handle, URLs with silly names, or that old email address that contains your high school nickname.
Horror has to be transgressive — a violation of the normally-polite pact between storyteller and audience. If you’re not crossing some kind of line, you’re doing it wrong.
If you find yourself writing a scene in which one character walks in and describes what just happened off-screen… stop. You’re writing a play. This is supposed to be a screenplay — “show, don’t tell”, remember?
Good news, everyone! The new, improved Black List has teamed up with Focal Press to offer you, the community, a chance to win fabulous prizes!
I can’t believe I just typed that, but in this case it’s actually true. The prizes are indeed fabulous. Check out all the competition details here: http://masteringfilm.com/whats-the-one-thing-anything-that-you-would-change-about-movies/
See? Fabulous. In case you weren’t up to clicking that link, let me tell you what the prizes are: 5 Focal Press books (including a copy of my book) and a 1-year subscription to Filmskills.
We call the competition Audience Tips. To win, all you have to do is answer the following question:
“What’s the one thing you’d change about movies?”
To be clear: we want your answer. It can be as broad, specific, funny, serious, flippant or wise as you like. You might choose to tackle it from a screenwriter’s perspective (“If only scripts with sad endings were more commercially viable”), an audience perspective (“There aren’t enough real female characters in summer movies!”), or your own, highly personal angle (“I wish they’d never closed down the local theater where I had my first kiss”).
The winning answers will be those that Scott, Franklin and I find most interesting and entertaining, and they will of course be published on the Black List blogs for all to see.
There are three ways to enter:
When it comes to horror, it’s always the little things that work the best — the wrong date on a letter, a figure in a photo, a gust of wind in a house with all the windows closed. Subtle is scary.
Fear of the unknown only works up to a point. Horror that never explains itself or establishes any sort of rules eventually becomes frustrating, then laughable.
