A Screenwriter's Journey #11: The Curriculum

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It’s been a long time, but this series is back. While I haven’t been writing these posts in a while, I’ve continued to write a new screenplay every month and currently have completed a feature or short for 16 consecutive months.

But that’s for another post, today’s post is about how I learned to write screenplays. My professional training is mostly in the social sciences, so my approach to anything is a combination of learning everything I can and then putting that into frequent action. So this post will actually be about that “learning everything I can” process. Here’s what I’ve consumed (and recommend) in order to become a screenwriter.

The first, and most obvious, thing to do if you want to write movies is you need to watch a lot of movies. But you not only need to watch them as a fan, you need to watch them critically and think about the way the filmmakers told their stories. Generally, I watch a movie the first time for pure enjoyment and don’t get too critical and don’t over-think it. I save that for the second or third watch. If the movie made me feel some kind of way, I re-watch it to figure out how the filmmakers did it. If they made me laugh, how did they set up the jokes and how did they pay them off? If they scared me, how did they do it, whether it be intellectually or through a plain old jump scare? If they made me hate the movie, how and why did I hate it? Yep, that means I purposefully watch bad movies, too. It’s important to see both what works and what doesn’t work.

It’s not enough, though, to just watch the movies. Watching a movie doesn’t give you much insight as to how to WRITE a movie. What words go on the page that lead to the images and sounds you see and hear? To figure that out, you have to read screenplays. Tons of them are available for free online and the same process works here, I read the screenplays of movies I loved. I read them for movies that are critically acclaimed. And I read them for bad movies. If I can find them. People don’t tend to post bad writing as often as you might think.

Okay, those are some generalized things to start with, and anyone interested in being a screenwriter has probably already started doing those (although they probably haven’t read enough screenplays. You really can’t read too many when trying to become a screenwriter). But these things don’t teach you the craft of how to actually write a screenplay. The good news is that there are tons of books, videos, podcasts and other things that can really help you. And most of them are inexpensive or free. The rest of this post will be a list of the things that I read, watched or listened to along the way and what was good or bad about them. If it’s listed here, you should probably at least be familiar with it, even if you don’t fully incorporate everything the author has to say into your work.

And that’s a key thing to keep in mind: There is no one right way to do this stuff. Every time someone says “you HAVE to do it this way,” there are many others who not only say you don’t have to do it that way, they easily point out massively successful AND critically acclaimed works that don’t fit that requirement. So my general rule of thumb is to approach this material the same way I would a scientific literature review: Read everything that has some relevance, take everything with a grain of salt, pay more attention to those who have proven their points through actual work and go with the aggregate of what people think and say while also allowing for more obscure approaches to influence me if they fit my process and my writing style.

Books

Here are the classics you have to read to understand the history and present state of screenwriting:

  • Screenplay - Syd Field

  • The Screenwriter's Workbook - Syd Field

  • Dialogue - Robert McKee

  • Story - Robert McKee

  • Save the Cat - Blake Snyder

  • Save the Cat Strikes Back - Blake Snyder

  • Save the Cat Goes to the Movies - Blake Snyder

And here are some that I think are classic, some even better than those in the above category:

  • Actions & Goals: The Story Structure Secret - Marshall L. Dotson

  • The Story Solution - Eric Edson

  • Writing Movies for Fun and Profit - Robert Garant and Thomas Lennon

  • The Great Courses: Screenwriting 101: Mastering the Art of Story

  • Writing for Emotional Impact - Karl Iglesias

  • The Craft of Scene Writing - Jim Mercurio

  • Anatomy of Story - John Truby

And here are some other books I’ve read that have good advice or craft instruction:

  • The Hollywood Pitching Bible - Ken Aguado & Douglas Eboch

  • Script Culture and the American Screenplay - Kevin Alexander Boon

  • The Way Hollywood Tells It - David Bordwell

  • Script Tease - Dylan Callaghan

  • Build Better Characters - Eileen Cook

  • Wired for Story - Lisa Cron

  • How NOT to Write a Screenplay - Denny Martin Flinn

  • Reading the Silver Screen - Thomas C. Foster

  • Fast, Cheap and Written That Way - John Gaspard

  • Writing the Comedy Blockbuster - Keith Giglio

  • The Great Courses: How to View and Appreciate Great Movies

  • On Writing Horror: A Handbook - The Horror Writers Association

  • The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters - Karl Iglesias

  • The Comic Hero's Journey - Steve Kaplan

  • On Writing - Stephen King

  • The Plot Machine - Dale Kutzera

  • The Tenacity of the Cockroach - The Onion A.V. Club

  • Making a Good Script Great - Linda Seger

  • Creating Character Arcs - K.M. Weiland

Podcasts

The Gold Standard is Scriptnotes and if you aren’t listening to this show AND going back into the archives, you’re missing out on the best recorded discussions about both screenwriting and the state of the industry.

Other good podcasts that are specifically about screenwriting include:

And here are a couple that regularly discuss creativity and specifics with filmmakers present and past:

Video Channels

These aren’t all explicitly about screenwriting. But they ALL discuss storytelling, story structure and other concepts directly related to screenwriting. Not every video they release is relevant, but many, if not most are.

This is a start. I’ll add more as I remember them or find new ones. If you know of good ones I haven’t included, e-mail them to quinnelk@gmail.com. I’ll also later to a post with specific blog posts, web articles, individual videos and podcast episodes that are particularly helpful for the craft and writing of screenplays.