Because every
story begins
with words

video what it’s like to work with a script doctor

Exclusive ghostwriting videos! What it’s like to work with a script doctor.

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.

Anton Chekhov

I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then stop.

Clarence Budington Kelland

My aim is to put down what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way I can tell it.

Ernest Hemingway

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Work on a computer that is disconnected from the Internet.

Zadie Smith

Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.

Edward Albee

I write the last line, and then I write the line before that. I find myself writing backwards for a while, until I have a solid sense of how that ending sounds and feels. You have to know what your voice sounds like at the end of the story, because it tells you how to sound when you begin.

John Irving

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.

Quentin Tarantino

No writer has ever yet been known to hang himself as long as he had another chapter left.

Thomas Wolfe

Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very”; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

Mark Twain

If you have an idea that you genuinely think is good, don’t let some idiot talk you out of it.

Stan Lee

What I loved most about calling myself a reporter was that it gave me an excuse to show up anyplace.

Jeanette Walls

Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.

E. B. White

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

E. L. Doctorow

Every writer with half a brain knows to surround himself or herself with editors who are smarter, far more articulate and infinitely better looking.

Chris Claremont

Do not place a photograph of your favorite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.

Roddy Doyle

You may be able to take a break from writing, but you won’t be able to take a break from being a writer.

Stephen Leigh

Just don’t be boring!

Robert Liebmann

I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.

Tom Clancy