What goes into writing a great movie script?

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

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.

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

What is the experience of wearing a school uniform every day? Do people typically get used to it or dislike it?

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

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

Research the facts and then throw away the research.

Pic: Manel Kape shares video of him fracturing foot in sparring ahead of UFC 317 - ‘I can’t walk!’ - MMAmania.com

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

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

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

Apollo astronauts discovered the moon is covered in tiny orange glass beads. Now we finally know why. - Live Science

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.

Make sure to pack enough explosives into the rocket.

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.

Our planet’s oxygen levels will drop, and there’s no way to stop it - Boy Genius Report

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

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

The DSM 5 is a wonderful character compendium.

PSA: You Probably Don't Need To Be Weighed At The Doctor's Office - HuffPost

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

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

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.

What is the logic behind the porn being legal but not prostitution? Isn't it the same thing in essence?

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

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.

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

Why is Harry Sisson such a whiny hypocrite? He complained about President Trump going to the Super Bowl "costing millions of taxpayers' dollars," but not a word when Taylor Swift, another multimillionaire, did the same thing.

Actors give better feedback than writers do.

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

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

How does it feel to watch your wife get fucked hard?