Screenwriting Quotes

What monster sleeps in the deep of your story? You need a monster. Without a monster there is no story.

~ Billy Marshall

Your audience is your adversary. If you don't have one get one - imagine it. Imagine it now. To whom is your story addressed and why? Audience is always a creative act of the imagination. You can't tell your story effectively and leave it out. It must be alive in you, vividly alive. It is in conflict with everything that is false in what you have written. If it is an audience worthy of your talent and potential, it won't let you slide by the lies, the laziness, the shortcuts. If you don't take audience seriously, you can be sure it will return the favor.

~ Billy Marshall Stoneking

Without the author there is nothing.

~ Michael E. Bierman

Everyone has their truth. Mine lies in the cinema.

~ Dawn Garcia

All tales, then, are at some level a journey into the woods to find the missing part of us, to retrieve it and make ourselves whole. Storytelling is as simple - and complex - as that. That's the pattern. That's how we tell stories.

~ John Yorke

To paraphrase Muggeridge: Everything is a parable that God is speaking to us, the art of life is to get the message.

~ Chester Elijah Branch

people don't really want original stories. they want different versions of the same story. this is called meta-narrative.

~ Chester Elijah Branch

Vulnerability is not a weakness, it strengthensone and allows one to be okay with ones emotions. Be in touch with yourself.Be yourself!

~ Christine Willson

The biggest difference between writing a movie and writing a novel? No one ever tries to sleep with me to get into one of my novels.

~ Mylo Carbia

[G]reat stories communicate simple truths that reflect the poetic dimensions of the human soul. Not only do powerful characters help us understand our lives, their stories reflect our core values as human beings.

~ Kate Wright

Makebelieve is a writer's best friend.

~ Solange Nicole

The answer to the question, 'where's the drama?' is another question: 'what's the problem?

~ Billy Marshall Stoneking

... the midpoint of each film is the moment when each protagonist embraces for the first time the quality they will need to become complete and finish their story. It's when they discover a truth about themselves.

~ John Yorke

Outside the cinema I had not yet learned to live, but within it I had most certainly learned to die. I could die for you in every way known to man, and in a few ways known only to scriptwriters. I could see now that provided that I remained fit, the future held many more deaths yet. I could only hope that they would serve some purpose, and that perhaps a reputation may come in the same way as a coral formation, which is made up of a deposit of countless tiny corpses.

~ Christopher Lee