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How to write a movie

Read it aloud, make sure there’s a favorite part - and don’t fall into the ‘German funk trap’. Frank Cottrell Boyce who scripted 24 Hour Party People and A Cock and Bull Story, lays down his screenwriting golden rules

…A while back, I was on Radio 4’s Film Programme the same day as Simon Pegg. We were asked what we thought of screenwriting manuals. I dismissed them as get-rich-quick compendiums of cliche. Pegg said he thought they were really useful. Our films opened that weekend. His vacuumed up money. Mine tanked. It may well be, I thought, that I’ve been missing something.

I decided to watch all my favourite movies again, notebook in hand, to figure out what made them work. Here are some of my observations. This is not a description of how I write. It’s more how I wish I’d written. A map of the rocks on which I perished.

— Guardian | Read The Full Article

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Tags | General Screenwriting, Rewriting, Screenwriting, Structure, Theory