Quotes & Sayings About Screenplay Writing

I like writing dialog but don't think I'd be much good at a screenplay. I once had to write a treatment for a novel of mine - a condition of its being optioned by a movie producer - and I turned out something pretty lackluster. So my inclination would be to stay out of the way of an experienced screenwriter. — Thomas Mallon

What will you do?"
"Oh, hell, I'll write a novel about writing the screenplay and making the movie."
"What are you going to call it?"
"Hollywood."
"Hollywood?"
"Yes ... — Charles Bukowski

Writing is my number one passion. I've written two novels. I've written a screenplay. I also write short stories and poetry. — Evangeline Lilly

If you're writing a screenplay from scratch, it involves a lot of creation. — Philippe Falardeau

I'm currently writing a screenplay that I haven't started yet. — Serena Williams

I like to begin every screenplay with a burst of delusional self-confidence. It tends to fade pretty quickly, but (for me, at least) there doesn't seem to be any other way to start writing a script. — Michael Arndt

I've quit writing screenplay [adaptations]. It's too much work. I don't look at writing a novel as work, because I only have to please myself. I have a good time sitting here by myself, thinking up situations and characters, getting them to talk - it's so satisfying. But screenwriting's different. You might think you're writing for yourself, but there are too many other people to please. — Elmore Leonard

My tombstone would someday read I died keeled over at my computer writing a screenplay or a business plan. — Gabriel Campisi

To me, the most perfect screenplay ever written will be one word, when you finally reduce it down to that. Until then, writing will be an imperfect form of communication. — Sylvester Stallone

You write a screenplay and then everybody is going to want to get in on it and we have to figure that out. I've written three screenplays that are at studios and I still haven't been making them yet so there is always something that is either going to trip something up or maybe get another pass. — Craig Brewer

After university, I went into film. I started out making tea, managed a brief stint as an assistant director, then found myself writing a screenplay. In the end, I wrote quite a few - but by January 2006, I wanted out. — Nick Harkaway

There is no screenplay-writing recipe that guarantees your cake will rise. — Robert McKee

I am co-writing a screenplay now and I'm working on the rights to another story I want to do. So I plan to produce and direct. So, for me, I don't really feel that I am vulnerable to that sad baggage that comes with the business of filmmaking. — Kerry Washington

I think it started to feel like home when I stopped maintaining any pretense that I was ever going to be in the movie business. I went there like many writers - I had a screenplay deal and I would go to these meetings and it was the typical thing. And I hated it. I was not interested in writing screenplays, actually. But I kept feeling like that was what I was supposed to do. It was just this horrible cognitive dissonance. — Meghan Daum

No false promises are made that if you read these pages, you will learn the formula for writing a million-dollar screenplay; in fact, the dirty little secret of screenwriting books is that anyone who promises such formulas is lying. There — Peter Hanson

I didn't know how story worked. So, when writing the screenplay, people introduced me to the science of it. And I'm grateful. I'll probably use that information for the rest of my career, in terms of writing novels or writing stories. And then, of course, to help me live a better story, a more meaningful story — Donald Miller

I set out to write a screenplay but, since my early 20s, had dreamed of writing a novel. — Graeme Simsion

When I set out to write a screenplay, I have in my mind a beginning and an end but that end part continually changes as I start to write the middle. That way by the time the screenplay is finished I have taken myself and my audience from a familiar beginning point through the story to an unfamiliar ending point. — Christian Keiber

If I know what my finale is when I'm writing a screenplay, then I don't always have to chart out every scene before that. I can adequately find my way. I'm experienced enough to do that. — David Twohy

Anyone living in Los Angeles who has opposable thumbs is required to write a screenplay. — James Scott Bell

I look at the film without any music or sound. I try to grasp the story from the screenplay. I try to write to the novel or book if there is one. I try to create music that's honest and true to my heart for the story. — Howard Shore

I had written eight drafts of the Lemony Snicket' screenplay when this changing-of-the-guard thing happened, and I said to the new producers, "I don't think I could write any more drafts." I guess I was sort of hoping they would say, "Well that's okay, this last one is perfect." But instead, they said, "It's funny you should say that. We don't think you can write any more drafts either." — Daniel Handler

I love film and have taken a stab at a screenplay. I love writing dialogue and found it highly enjoyable. — Kaui Hart Hemmings

Try everything; listen to everyone. Follow no one. You are your own story guru! — Jeff Lyons

Ronald Spiers: The only hope you have is to accept the fact that you're already dead. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you'll be able to function as a soldier is supposed to function: without mercy, without compassion, without remorse. All war depends upon it. — Stephen E. Ambrose

I think longer that you sit on a screenplay the longer you sit. I'm a firm believer that you can write the magic out of a movie, out of a screenplay. I'm not saying that the first draft is always the best draft but a lot of times the magic is in the first couple of drafts. T — Todd Farmer

If you're writing a screenplay, you need to be prepared to let go: there's a good chance the words you write aren't going to be the ones that end up on screen. — Meg Cabot

Most directors, I discovered, need to be convinced that the screenplay they're going to direct has something to do with them. And this is a tricky thing if you write screenplays where women have parts that are equal to or greater than the male part. And I thought, 'Why am I out there looking for directors?' - because you look at a list of directors, it's all boys. It certainly was when I started as a screenwriter. So I thought, 'I'm just gonna become a director and that'll make it easier.' — Nora Ephron

What's great about writing a screenplay is that the subtext of the scene, what is not said, can sometimes be more important that what is said. Again, dialogue serves two basic functions in the scene: Either it moves the story forward or it reveals information about the character. — Syd Field

Well, I kind of approach both of them similarly in (that) I always see it as a movie first because that's my background. Cindy Kelley, who has been my writing partner on my novels, she works more on the prose side and the description side of the storytelling because, obviously, there's a lot more of that in a novel than in a screenplay. You only have up to 120 pages in a screenplay. — Michael Landon Jr.

I was born in the era of the novel. I've written many, as well as collections of poetry, and essays for mouthing off. I've written to inches, word-counts, page-counts, even the sonnet and the screenplay (which I call a plot poem). I write narrative. That's it. I just want to tell it. — Julianna Baggott

When I write a screenplay - and I think this is true for a lot of people - you direct the movie. That's what writing a screenplay is. — John Patrick Shanley

I don't think screenplay writing is the same as writing - I mean, I think it's blueprinting. — Robert Altman

When I started writing short stories, I thought I was writing a novel. I had like 60 or 70 pages. And what I realized was that I don't write inner monologue. I don't want to talk about what somebody is thinking or feeling. I wanted to try to show it in an interesting way. And so what I realized was that I was really writing a screenplay. — Shane Carruth

Writing a screenplay, I'm like, "All I'm responsible for is that final script, and I take great effort and pride in that." But once I give it to someone to make, I can disassociate with it entirely and not worry that my vision isn't being represented, because I understand fully that that's not how it works. — Daniel Clowes

Most of screenplay writing is deciding which voices you want to listen to and take on board. — Abi Morgan

... ... , but as I am a scholar I feel obliged to document what it is like here, most of the time, between the dramatic climaxes. In truth it is like this: You cannot imagine how time can be so still. It hangs. It weighs, and yet there is so little of it. It goes so slowly and it is so scarce. If I was writing this scene it would last a full 15 minutes. I would lie here and you would sit there. — Margaret Edson

In LA, it's the law that you must be engaged in writing a screenplay with your hairdresser, pool boy, personal trainer, life coach, dog walker, or yoga instructor. — Mimi Pond

I don't care who you are. When you sit down to write the first page of your screenplay, in your head, you're also writing your Oscar acceptance speech. — Nora Ephron

This particular one was very, very heartwarming and is the relationship of an older man and a young boy that are essentially on the run. And so yeah, as I say, Barry Crump wrote a lot of books and this one got into the hands of Taika Watiti who then writing the screenplay decided to really vamp up if that's the word, or ramp up and modernize certain phrases - getting in the humor. So he added a lot of a real comedy perspective onto it which is what I think the story needed anyway, especially for it to turn into a film. And it worked. — Rhys Darby

Passage of time can be mind-numbing to figure out in a screenplay. It's the easiest thing to do in prose, not just by writing 'four years later', but you can shift time in a sentence or two. — Mark Boal

About a year ago I got really exhausted from reading bad scripts and I know that I am a writer and that I have stories to tell, so I thought, 'Let's do this!' So I'm co-writing a screenplay now with another screenwriter and loving it. Absolutely loving it. And I would like to be the producer on the project and of course the lead is me. — Kerry Washington

I found the structure of writing a screenplay harder than the structure of writing an essay. But it was definitely challenging to force myself to sit and write. I'm not used to having to force myself to work. — Judy Greer

Whether I'm in front of the camera, behind the camera, at my computer writing a novel or a screenplay, as long as I get to entertain someone out there, I'm happy. — Chris Colfer

I came into screenwriting from an odd direction, because the first screenplay that I read was and is better as writing than the top one percent of literary novels. — William Monahan

Screenplays are structure, and that's all they are. The quality of writing - which is crucial in almost every other form of literature - is not what makes a screenplay work. Structure isn't anything else but telling the story, starting as late as possible, starting each scene as late as possible. You don't want to begin with "Once upon a time," because the audience gets antsy. — William Goldman

I believe that improvisation is really just a directorial tool. It's a writing tool. It's not so much that the actors get to say whatever they want, whatever pops into their head. It's an opportunity to write the last draft of the screenplay as you're working on it. — Ivan Reitman

I don't generate a storyline and then fill it out in the course of writing. The story actually generates in the course of the writing. It's one of the reasons I've never been comfortable doing screenplays, because in order to get the contract for the screenplay, you have to sit down and tell them what's going to happen. — William Gibson

That freedom of writing you don't get in other formats, I'd rather leave it to someone else to deal with the headache of drafting my book into a screenplay. — Ashwin Sanghi

New Rule: Gun-control people have to stop pressuring Starbucks to ban guns. I want my gun nuts overcaffeinated, twitchy, and accident-prone. That way, the problem will take care of itself. Plus, if just one gun nut kills just one pseudo-intellectual writing a screenplay-slash-graphic-novel on his iPad, natural selection is doing its job. — Bill Maher

I didn't know anything about writing a screenplay, but somehow I ended up rewriting a screenplay. — Kate DiCamillo

In a novel, language is your principal tool, you try to build pictures in the mind of the reader. When you write a screenplay, the language is just a transition, the final goal is a picture on the screen, it's the only thing the audience sees. — Philippe Claudel

It's much like writing a screenplay with someone else and that's how we view it, I think. — Christopher Darden

Once I was in college, I was actually trying to write a comedy screenplay and I wrote basically the worst movie ever and just threw it away and never showed anybody. Everyone needs to get that first bad screenplay out of your system before you start writing other stuff. — Scot Armstrong

Because I write the screenplay entirely and precisely, there is the danger that an actor might feel that this finite role is being imposed on them. I want the actors to feel that this is their own role, and that they can go back to point zero and develop this character. — Asghar Farhadi

When you're writing a screenplay every scene needs to change from positive to negative, or negative to positive, and constantly trying to change the values of the movie. — Sam De Jong

Writing a screenplay is like writing a big puzzle, and so the hardest part, I think, is getting the story. — Grant Heslov

Usually if you read a screenplay, no matter who's writing it, the bad guy is always written as a one-dimensional bad guy. — Mickey Rourke

Screenplay is the toughest form of writing for me, because you need to be in present tense. You need to be describing things as they occur. — Guillermo Del Toro

I want to release another CD this year, finish writing a screenplay, and make another short film. — Todd Barry

I love the students - they are remarkable, inspiring people. I would miss teaching if I stopped doing it. The kind of work I do is pretty diverse: I can cast a play while doing a polish of a screenplay, while thinking about a new play and revising another. In other words, the kind of work that I do during my work day is not just writing, yet it is all part of the job of being a playwright. — Donald Margulies

With the right tools, you can write anything ... — Jeff Lyons

You cannot live in Los Angeles for any period of time without eventually trying to write a screenplay. It's like a flu bug that you catch ... Even the plumber has a screenplay in his truck. — Gilda Radner

I read every screenplay that was being sent to the other directors. None were being sent to me, but I was reading what others were choosing and what the best writers were writing. — Rupert Sanders

Star Wars was a total piece of shit that had spawned billions of dollars in merchandise and sequels and books and games and pajama bottoms. It was an infinite reservoir, it was an endless void. It was responsible for a cornucopia of made up words like Jedi, the Force and lightsaber.

A lightsaber was a sword made of light. A sword was a weapon used to murder people.

A Jedi was a knight who believed in an idea of relative good and performed supernatural feats using the Force. A Jedi used supernatural feats and his lightsaber to murder people with opposing ideas of relative good.

The Force was an ill-explained mystical energy which ran throughout the fictional universe of Star Wars. It was a device which allowed characters to perform supernatural feats whenever a lull was created by poor writing in the screenplay.

As might be imagined, the Force was used with great frequency. — Jarett Kobek

If you write a screenplay that gets circulated, you have a bigger readership than any literary novelist. And it's an educated audience as well. — William Monahan

If you have a good script, that's what gets you involved. It's harder to write a good screenplay than to find something. — Bill Murray

Writing a screenplay needs to be more than words on a page - and by the way, I think the words on the page are something you have to try to execute on the highest level you can; I'm not dismissing that by any regard. — John Ridley

The secret to writing a screenplay is keeping you ass in the chair.
(ASS + CHAIR = PAGES!) — Oliver Stone

I do not recommend writing a screenplay in two weeks. — Christy Hall

By the time I was doing "Kill Bill," it was so much filled with prose that, you know, I start seeing why people write a screenplay and make it more like a blueprint, because basically I had written - in "Kill Bill," I had basically written a novel, and basically every day I was adapting my novel to the screen on the fly, you know, on my feet. — Quentin Tarantino

I was in Los Angeles making 'Dead Again' and the producer, Lindsay Doran , asked me if I'd be interested in adapting this book, .. Austen is my favorite author and I thought, 'Well, of course, I'd be very interested, but I don't know how. I don't know where to start, A, writing a screenplay and B, sort of adapting it from a great novel. — Emma Thompson

On the one occasion where I did try writing a screenplay, I found the rewriting just unendurable. — Alan Moore

If you're writing a screenplay for a feature, you don't have any involvement with the casting process, the editing process, the set design, the costume design, or any of that stuff. — David Benioff

One of the things about writing a novel is you can do it any way you want. It's your voice that's important and I see absolutely no reason why a screenplay can't be the same. It makes it a hell of a lot easier when you're the writer and the director. — Quentin Tarantino

Once I started writing the screenplay of 'Bride & Prejudice,' I was convinced Jane Austen was a Punjabi in her previous birth. — Gurinder Chadha

I've been a professional athlete, I've directed films, I've run a company with 150 employees, and nothing compares to writing a screenplay. Just the second I think I know what I'm doing, the rug gets pulled out and I have no idea what I'm doing. Because there are so many problems to solve. — Stacy Peralta

Mostly writing requires massive dedication, a whole lot of time spent alone, way too much sitting, countless hours spent thinking hard, and unending and occasionally painful dedication to forming ideas and laboring over the production of sentences, paragraphs, scenes, dialogue, punctuation, and all the elements that go into writing a novel, a play, a screenplay, or a poem. When we're not writing, we're thinking, plotting, imagining, or editing, which can be far more tedious than cranking out first drafts.
--Fire Up Your Writing Brain — Susan Reynolds

I've always equated the writing process with editing, sort of like when I get through editing the movie, that's like my last draft of the screenplay. — Quentin Tarantino

Of all the most devastating sounds in the universe, silence is the most powerful. — Gerard De Marigny

LIFE IS AN ENTHUSIASM. MY EXPERIENCE OF LIFE, MY VISION ALL ARE MENTION IN MY BOOKS. WRITING LANGUAGE - MALAYALAM. I BORN AND BROUGHT UP IN KERALA. MY LIFE PERIOD MORE THAN 28 YEARS WORKING IN THE MIDDLE EAST. IN MY LIFE EXPERIENCE INVOLVED IN MY ALL LITERARY WORKS - POEMS, DRAMA, NOVELS, TRAVELOGUES, SHORT STORIES & SCREENPLAY. — Saravan Maheswer

Writing a screenplay is like climbing a mountain. When you're climbing, all you can see is the rock in front of you and the rock directly above you. You can't see where you've come from or where you're going. — Syd Field

I don't think I write differently when I'm writing a screenplay, as opposed to a stage play or a teleplay. Maybe if I were in a film class and there was time to think about it, we could point out differences. — Aaron Sorkin

My understanding of films was just as much as any young girl who watches Bollywood films. I had no idea about the whole process of filmmaking, about dialogue writing, scripts, screenplay etc. I had probably gone to two or three film shoots in my childhood. — Rani Mukerji

There are many self-proclaimed "screenwriting gurus" - though how you get to be a "guru" of something you've never actually done is beyond us. Screenplays are like blueprints. A guy who's drawn up a lot of blueprints that have never actually been made into buildings is not an "architecture guru," he's an "unemployed douchebag." A guy who talks about screen-writing but who's never sold a screenplay is not a "screenwriting guru," he's a "lecture circuit bullshit artist." From now on, that's what we'll call them. — Thomas Lennon

Whether it's writing a monologue or writing standup or writing a screenplay or writing a play, I think staying involved in the creation of your own work empowers you in a way, even if you don't ever do it. It gives you a sense of ownership and a sense of purpose, which I think as an actor is really important. — Denis O'Hare

The truth is, when I started to make films, I was terrified. I had a huge difference in what I was writing in the screenplay and what was on the screen after. Sometimes there was a big gap. Now, the more I have experienced, the more I do movies, the more I feel that the dream is closer to the screen. It's coming with experience. — Denis Villeneuve

I never thought I was capable of writing a whole book until Ursula K. Le Guin, with whom I worked briefly in publishing, said, 'you already wrote one (referencing a screenplay), you just need to add the details. — E.L. Sayers

So I have 8 to 10 screenplays written and unproduced. And frankly, some of them are my favorite stories. I have a Western version of The Count Of Monte Cristo where the count has a clockwork hand. I have a screenplay called Mephisto's Bridge about a Faustian deal with the devil. I love them all. — Guillermo Del Toro

I don't write [screenplay character] biographies beforehand. I usually go in knowing some sequences: this is where I want to start, this is where I want to end. — John Sayles

There are a lot of bad screenplays so if you write a good screenplay people are going to respond to it. — Quentin Tarantino

Natural writers will often try to force themselves into a form - novel, story, screenplay, or poem - that is not necessarily the appropriate form for the way they see the world ... if, in fact, they are writing from the artist's impulse, which is a deep, inchoate vision of some sort of order behind the apparent chaos of life on planet earth, they'll be driven then to express that vision in the creation of the object - the art object. — Robert Olen Butler

The number one metaphor I have in my mind for writing a screenplay is that ... you're trying to climb a mountain blindfolded. And the funny thing about that is, you think, 'Okay, that's hard because you're climbing up a rock face, and you don't know where you're going, and you don't know where the top is, you can't see what's below you ... ' But actually the hardest part about climbing a mountain blindfolded is just finding the mountain. — Michael Arndt

Really, when I write a book I'm the only one I have to please. That's the beauty of writing a book instead of a screenplay. — Elmore Leonard

The personal screenplay- where you dive into the terrifying depths of your soul, unearth the most intimate details about yourself, and put it on paper for the world to see. Proceed with caution, for madness lies ahead. — A.D. Posey

Writing a screenplay, for me, is like juggling. It's like, how many balls can you get in the air at once? All those ideas have to float out there to a certain point, and then they'll crystallize into a pattern. — James Cameron

What I found interesting writing a screenplay as opposed to writing a novel is not the obvious thing, which is having to pare everything down and find the kind of essence, the skeleton if you like, which can then be fleshed out by performance and cinematography. — Salman Rushdie