What goes into writing a great movie script?

Don’t direct from the page. Everyone, from the director on down, wants to be part of the process of making movies. Let them do their work.

Leave holes. Write and unwrite. Put it in, take it out.

Your primary job is to create situations. Modern actors will fuck up your dialogue, despite whatever your contract says.

How do I remove the music from a movie or animation? I want to keep the audio from the dialogue and sound effects, but remove the music so that I can add my own.

Research the facts and then throw away the research.

Audiences are smarter than you think. Something about turning down the house lights makes their IQs go up.

All rules are made to be broken, but you damn well better know WHY you’re breaking them.

NASA unexpectedly finds 'X-shaped structures' in Earth’s upper atmosphere, which they can’t fully explain - Earth.com

Learn to tell a story orally and not through writing. Try telling your story to a friend.

What you leave unwritten is as important as what you write. SUBTEXT.

Primary characters must change polarities. Secondary characters can change less.

What is your review of X-Men '97 season 1?

The DSM 5 is a wonderful character compendium.

Conflict is your power source; without it you have no drama and hence no script.

Outline everything. Use story beats. Keep character’s mouths taped up, until they absolutely MUST speak. Write the script and the dialogue at the last minute, after you’ve revised the hell out of the outline.

How short is too short for a skirt?

A critical function of storytelling is wish fulfillment. This is why video games are so popular. “That protagonist is JUST LIKE ME.”

Cut everything that is not a payoff, or a setup for a specific payoff. “Omit needless words.” Think about the sparseness of joke telling, or Grimm Brothers.

A scene should change valence from beginning to end. Up to down, down to up.

Trump Raked in $57.3 Million From Crypto Venture, Per White House Financial Disclosures - Rolling Stone

Actors give better feedback than writers do.

People choose what to see based on the high concept. Make sure to deliver an ending consistent with the high concept -- it is what the audience paid for.

To develop a unique voice for each character, try interviewing your characters.

If your only job was to make people laugh at you and that’s all you were good for, would you be depressed?

Only God gets it right the first time. Rewrite everything.

Make sure to pack enough explosives into the rocket.

Get up there yourself. Be in a movie. Take some acting (not writing) classes. Learn how a trained actor approaches a text. Learn why actors take roles. They do as much if not more than the writer does.

How airline fees have turned baggage into billions - BBC

Write in reverse time. Major characters need to change polarity; minor characters may remain the same at the end.

Use status to help drive conflict. King Lear/fool. Upstairs/downstairs.

Maintain a slush pile/idea file. When you are ready to write, choose the best seeds to plant.

Physicists set new world record for qubit operation accuracy - Phys.org