Shane Black Quotes

The hardest single thing you do is get the bloody screenplay right.

Scriptwriting is the toughest part of the whole racket... the least understood and the least noticed.

Sometimes I find it tiresome to write actions and describe the scene in a very intricate way so that every crew member understands where we are going - that I can find a little bit long and tiresome. But dialogue is just all my life. There's no way I could ever be challenged, not challenged, but I'm always so happy to write dialogue.

I find that screenwriting is at best kind of a hackwork in some ways.

Writing scripts is a laborious job that can be a real pain.

It is extremely satisfying when you finish a script, but the process of it can be just nerve-wracking.

It's not writing in the traditional sense, but I've always said that the writing process continues on the set and even into the editing room.

When I'm the one who sits down and looks at the blank page and writes it out all the way, then I'll call it my script.

I used to think it was hard to write, and I still find the process more or less unpleasant, but if I know what I'm doing it rattles along, then the rewrite whips it into shape rather quickly.

To be a dramatic writer takes hard work, talent, and discipline. And that's why I just make up crap.

Writing's still the most difficult job I've ever had - but it's worth it.

It is so much hard work writing your first novel. You're not even sure that it is possible to do.

I was very happy sitting alone at a dining room table, writing a script.

Anybody who likes writing a book is an idiot. Because it's impossible; it's like having a homework assignment every stinking day until it's done. And by the time you get it in, it's done and you're sitting there reading it, and you realize the 12,000 things you didn't do. I mean, writing isn't fun. It's never been fun.

Publishing a short story can sometimes feel like shouting into the dark... your words come out, and then nothing... but I don't think that's why I tend to write novels rather than stories.

I love stories. I just enjoy telling stories and watching what these characters do - although writing continues to be just as hard as it always was.

I love writing journalism because it's all over in two hours and comes straight off the top of the head. Writing novels is soooooo much harder. It's the hardest thing I've ever done.

The first time I ever heard professional actors delivering lines that I wrote was completely surreal and was just a gigantic moment in my life. It was just a little bit mind-blowing and completely strange to have something that had been on my computer being said out loud.

So much of writing isn't the fun parts like we get to discuss. It is sitting there putting the words down.

I always write the script by myself.

I don't think screenwriting is therapeutic. It's actually really, really hard for me. It's not an enjoyable process.

I'm still very much a believer in the spontaneity of certain kinds of writing. But then you have to eventually, when you're writing a long play, make adjustments along the way - all kinds of adjustments.

I've always scribbled, and I still do it. I've written numerous scripts for films for which I think I'd be perfect as the complex, intelligent and, yes, modern heroine. Embarrassingly bad, all of them. I've had to come to terms with the fact that I'm not a writer.

In my office in Florida I have, I think, 30 manuscript piles around the room. Some are screenplays or comic books or graphic novels. Some are almost done. Some I'm rewriting. If I'm working with a co-writer, they'll usually write the first draft. And then I write subsequent drafts.

Writing, yeah. Me and my friend Scott Bloom just finished the first rough draft of a script. It's taken us three years to do, but we finally got a first draft. And we'll see whatever happens with that.