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elevated story telling, GET OUT, How to Elevate Your Writing, JUNO, LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, specifics - November 06, 2019

How to Elevate Your Writing: Specifics

Specifics are the stuff of great screenplays. Quick, what are three of the best screenplays of the last twenty years? Plenty of screenwriters might mention GET OUT, JUNO, and LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE. Not coincidentally, all three won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. All three have also been heavily influential on spec screenplays, often imitated in the spec market. But what specifics make these screenplays stand out? In GET OUT, the white family that welcomes in their white daughter’s black boyfriend is seemingly progressive. Bradley Whitford’s character confides to his daughter’s black boyfriend that he would have voted for Obama...

When To Pack It In: Rejection in Screenwriting (The Answer is Never)

If you truly believe your script is great, and you have objective reasons to think that opinion is credible, there is no reason to ever give up on it. The crucial point here is that the reasoning behind the belief must be at least somewhat validated in reality. In other words, if this is the first script you’ve ever written, and everyone who reads it hates it, that might not be the hill to die on. But if you’ve gotten objective third-party reads that have been enthusiastic, and you’ve spent years polishing your craft, and in your heart of hearts...

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