
Is the customer always right? Of course not. This is not 1950. Are we word slaves at the service of tyrannical bosses? Nope. If Read More...
Is the customer always right? Of course not. This is not 1950.
Are we word slaves at the service of tyrannical bosses? Nope.
If somebody calls and wants us to essentially take dictation, I’ll refer them to a typist.
If someone tells me they’ve completed their first screenplay and it’s brilliant, and all they need is a little editing and a polish, I warn them. “Stop right there. You may think it’s brilliant, but a professional screenwriter will probably think otherwise. If I send your work to one of my people, I guarantee you will hear things you don’t want to hear.”
We’re not trying to beat you up. We want you to succeed, and we know what needs to be done to achieve that. And we know if you’re new at this that you’ve made mistakes that will prevent your work from ever being filmed.
Don’t sabotage yourself.
Let’s pretend you have a basic understanding of how the mechanical innards of a car work. You take the car to a mechanic because it’s become sluggish. The mechanic will want to know the symptoms; that will help his diagnosis. But that mechanic will not appreciate being told what to do by an amateur.
If you want the job done right, trust your professional.
Every writer with half a brain knows to surround himself or herself with editors who are smarter, far more articulate and infinitely better looking.
To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I’m writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I’m going to play for the opening sequence.
It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil, trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.
No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.
Keep a small can of WD-40 on your desk — away from any open flames — to remind yourself that if you don’t write daily, you will get rusty.
If the sex scene doesn’t make you want to do it — whatever it is they’re doing — it hasn’t been written right.
My aim is to put down what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way I can tell it.
No writer has ever yet been known to hang himself as long as he had another chapter left.
I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.
A true author, no matter the medium, is an artist with godlike knowledge of his subject, and the proof of his authorship is that his pages smack of authority.
Thank your readers and the critics who praise you, and then ignore them. Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe: Write to please yourself.
Editor: A person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.

























