What goes into writing a great movie script?

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

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

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.

Isn't it a turn on to have sex with a girl in a skirt or in a tight spandex?

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

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.

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

Nvidia insiders dump more than $1 billion in stock, according to report - CNBC

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

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

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

Former Red Sox All-Star Designated For Assignment One Day After Season Debut - NESN

Research the facts and then throw away the research.

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

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

Pocono starting lineup: Denny Hamlin becomes oldest Cup pole winner since 2017 - NBC Sports

Make sure to pack enough explosives into the rocket.

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.

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

Direct Injection Engines: Why Carbon Buildup Happens (And How To Prevent It) - Jalopnik

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

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

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.

This Expensive-Looking Swivel Chair Will Almost Certainly Sell Out Again - HuffPost

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

Actors give better feedback than writers do.

The DSM 5 is a wonderful character compendium.

Wright State stuns No. 1 Vanderbilt with historic upset in baseball regionals - Yahoo Sports

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

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

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.

Gina Ortiz Jones, a Progressive, Is Elected San Antonio’s Mayor - The New York Times