Create a fresh perspective to familiarize tales
The strongest ideas are dramatic, and drama means action
It must be a compelling journey with dynamic characters that the audience will care about
Make your story consistent
Know what you want to write
Strong scripts know what they are and what they are trying to do
You need to consider the format
The more your script is coherently formed, the more impressive and effective it will be
Hook your audience’s attention immediately
Begin with the characters in action, showing who they are by what they do
Do something significant in the opening act (such as setting your characters a problem or dilemma)
Plan your story (work out the order in which you want your audience to piece it together)
Bring any important story points from the past into present-tense
Your ending should follow the character’s journey
Great endings should be inevitable, but not predictable
Your character’s journey depends on your genre
Action = tension and jeopardy
Thrillers = clues and false leads
Make things difficult for the characters while raising the stakes for the audience
Surprise the audience
Your characters should drive everything that happens in your story and are always on a journey
Your characters should want and need something, as this would lead to dilemmas and choices
Understand the world from your character’s point of view
We don’t need to like or admire our characters, but do need to care for them
Protagonists can do very bad things but still demonstrate the vulnerability that we can empathise with
Remember that characters are the beating heart of every great script
A scene offers a time, place and setting for a significant moment in a story
If things are explained, then it's an exposition, not a scene
The position of a scene defines what it does and means
A dialogue is not just what a character says, it is what they express by what they say. It’s not conversation, it has a purpose
Characters, just like real people, do not express themselves with perfect grammar or sentences
Beware of characters pushing issues or agendas that don’t ring true
Avoid expositional dialogue
Avoid having characters tell each other things that they would already know
Dialogue isn’t just about the words on the page, it’s about the things left unsaid
No script falls perfectly finished on to the page, try to be as objective as possible. Read it like someone else might read it, in one go.
Read the script out loud and make the characters talk
Scripts are blueprints in a production process
No script is finished until it’s made