What goes into writing a great movie script?

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

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.

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.

Nothing Phone (3) camera, battery and charging specs spill in new leak - Notebookcheck

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

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.

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.

Apple’s Liquid Glass interface improves with release of iOS 26 Beta 2 - TechCrunch

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

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

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

Mario Kart World tech analysis, including frame rate and resolution - Nintendo Everything

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

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

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

2025 NFL All-Paid Team: Saquon Barkley, Dak Prescott headline top earners by position - NFL.com

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

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.

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

Trump slams Russia's Medvedev for claiming countries will give Iran nuclear warheads - CNBC

The DSM 5 is a wonderful character compendium.

Actors give better feedback than writers do.

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

What’s going on with measles, bird flu, and COVID? Here’s a guide to the latest. - The Boston Globe

Make sure to pack enough explosives into the rocket.

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

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

Roundup: All The Xbox Reveals From Summer Game Fest 2025 - Pure Xbox

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

Research the facts and then throw away the research.