What goes into writing a great movie script?

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

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

The DSM 5 is a wonderful character compendium.

Making a Diving Catch For Space - NASA Watch

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.

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

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

Montana warns of new disease-carrying tick species in the state - KREM

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

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

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

Unvaccinated cat in St. Johns County prompts 60-day rabies alert - News4JAX

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

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

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

Seattle Mariners Injury Updates: Logan Gilbert, Bryce Miller, Luke Raley, More - Lookout Landing

Research the facts and then throw away the research.

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.

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

Neuroscience breakthroughs: Surprising truths about memory revealed in 7 recent studies - PsyPost

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

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

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.

How should an atheist respond to a religious person who asks, "Why do you hate God?" What are some appropriate and inappropriate ways to answer this question?

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

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

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.

I Can't Wait for Apple's F1 Movie. Its Haptic iPhone Trailer Has Me Even More Excited - CNET

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.

Actors give better feedback than writers do.

Make sure to pack enough explosives into the rocket.

Kirk Cousins spoke to the media — Here are 5 things we learned - Atlanta Falcons