I use fishing as a metaphor for one’s approach to screenwriting. Seriously. It’s Saturday morning and I am here, seated amidst a half-dozen other men, my brother, and my ten year-old son at Murray’s Fly Shop in Edinburg, Virginia. We have gathered to fish on the Shenandoah River. But before…

“You need to call it. I can’t call it for you. It wouldn’t be fair. It wouldn’t even be right.” The coin toss scene from No Country For Old Men (2007), screenplay by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, one of the most riveting scenes in the movie.

Re-thinking the role of failure in the creative life. As writers, we have to learn how to handle losses and let-downs. Why? Because it is a constant dynamic in our lives. I was reminded of this when screenwriter Brian Koppelman (Rounders, Solitary Man, Oceans Thirteen) posted the following tweets: The…

Why 30 screenplays in 30 days? Because whether you are a novice just starting to learn the craft of screenwriting or someone who has been writing for many years, you should be reading scripts. There is a certain type of knowledge and understanding about screenwriting you can only get from…

A new book from the writers of A Quiet Place. Over the years, I’ve gotten to know the filmmaking duo of Scott Beck and Bryan Woods pretty. I first interviewed them in 2018 upon the enormous success of their movie A Quiet Place. Then I invited them to a screenwriting…

It’s that time of year again when studios and production companies make available PDFs of movie scripts for award season. As in years past, I will be tracking the year’s movie scripts as links become available. Current total of 2022 scripts for download: 12. …

In Hollywood movie circles, there are genres like Horror or Science Fiction, cross genres like Action-Thriller or Drama-Comedy, and sub-genres like Romantic Comedy or Mystery Thriller. Then there are story types, a shorthand way to describe a specific narrative conceit that is almost always tied directly to the movie’s central…