Five Tips For Screenwriters
In our Screenwriters' Lecture Series, writers of film and TV share their wisdom about the art of writing and what makes a successful screenplay.
But what about the people they work with to bring that script to life? We've rounded up directors, actors and producers to find out what they most value in a screenwriter and to bring you five tips for a successful collaboration.
Be Incisive
Tony Gilroy writes smart and clean. There’s no cutesy bullshit on the page – just incisive dialogue and minimal description, which propel you deep inside his characters and narrative… His terse, intelligent style cuts right to the quick of today’s cynical, narcissistic society.
Taylor Hackford on Tony Gilroy
Maybe it’s Nick’s modesty and allergy to anything pretentious that explains the minimalism in his scripts. They are, at the same time, airy and dense. His dialogue and prose is usually dry and precise, but on rare occasions there is space for a wonderful effect: Nick’s setting characters free when spilling their beans, or letting himself divert into long, meticulously detailed description.
Understand the Role of the Actor
He is a writer who understands drama, who believes in the power of what an actor in a dark space can do with words. He understands breath, beats, pause, the music of dialogue and the value of silence; but more than that he appreciates and understands the actors’ custom.
Be Flexible
She proves quite quickly to be an exquisitely open and flexible collaborator, a merciful queen of the medium and an auteur who knows where to draw the line between open, free collaboration and adherence to themes and narratives too personal to even think about diverting from.
Jonathan Demme on Susannah Grant
She will bravely, and in no uncertain terms, tell you when she thinks you are wrong, but will also embrace and enhance every good idea you throw at her. We adore working with her as we know that the workd will not only be great but the process will be hugely enjoyable and usually take you places you wouldn’t expect.
Eric Fellner CBE on Emma Thompson
Draw From Your Surroundings
David is something of a pioneer. He has a unique connection with the zeitgeist of US pop culture... He creates characters that fuse pulp, comics, hard-boiled fiction and street culture and has an innate understanding of the cultural pulse of the here and now.
Guillermo del Toro on David S Goyer
He’s always written women beautifully because he surrounds himself with the best of them, at home and in his company.
As is typical with Nancy’s movies, [the part she offered me] was sophisticated and accurate to human behaviour. She writes quirkiness very well without it looking too exaggerated. She writes real people.
Know Your Genre but Play With Convention
[I was] immediately sucked into this intense little world of the criminal subculture in London. In a sense, Steve reinvented the crime movie, because the [Eastern Promises] script accessed all the great parts of that genre while inverting and subverting them in an interesting way.