Frank Peretti Quotes

Some of our best writers are self taught. Screenwriting is a combo of craft and art. The craft part can be taught, about how to be visual and economical with scenes. However, finally it's the individuality of the writer that will come into play.

You use simple brushstrokes in a screenplay for things over which you would take much greater pains in a novel.

When I write a screenplay - and I think this is true for a lot of people - you direct the movie. That's what writing a screenplay is.

I actually think I'm probably more interested in structure than most people who write screenplays, because I think about it.

I love writing dialogue, and I think a lot of my writing is visual and very cinematic.

Writing a screenplay is so spare, it kind of reminded me that I really should celebrate what I can do in a book, which is description: for example, places, people, locations.

Even Dopehri,' if somebody has a bit of imagination, the way it's written, they will be able to see that it's a screenplay with dialogues.

I like to say, 'You get as much story as you can take.' But you have to effectively render it.

I definitely have the screenwriting itch.

I think screenplay is hard. I've tried that, and it felt really difficult; like, all the stuff I think I'm good at, like description and internal experience and memory, you can't do that - or, at least, I couldn't figure out a way.

Because TV is mostly close up, it has to be fast. And because it has to be fast, you don't have time to explain completely, by a sequence shot, what's happening between people. So instead of experiencing what's happening, say, when a couple is dancing, dialogue is used to explain.

I am not an analytical writer. Once I flesh out my characters and decide on the elements of my plot, the story unfolds in my head almost as though it was a movie reel.

An attempt to write nothing but characterization will soon bog down; I for one don't want to have somebody tell me about someone else.

Writing a TV show is totally different than writing features, or just, what I started doing is writing features. You write a little bit more organically. You start from the beginning to the end, beginning, middle and end.

I've been told, and I think I recognize it, that there's a cinematic quality to my writing, with a sense of image and place and scene - and, some would say, my tendency to finish my books the way Hollywood finishes its films.

I find screenplays easy to write, my novels being very visual. You see what people look like. The physical action is described.

I always find the first thing that really bothers me when I start a screenplay is, I have to find a different form. You can't follow the form of the novel. It's a different thing completely. It's impossible. You just somehow have to find a structure for the whole thing. You have to crack that.

It's fun to improvise, but I still think it's better to have a great script, you know, like a Charlie Kaufman script.

It's hard to find scripts that know what they are from page one to page 115.

I get so excited about reading a new script.

I've only ever taken a playwriting class, but I like creative writing and writing screenplays.

The basic rule of storytelling is 'show, don't tell.'

I'd be lying if I said that any part of writing is easy for me, but I have always found that setting comes more naturally to me than, say, writing action scenes.

It really just gives you a sense of when you need to have dialogue and when you don't, and if your pictures are telling the story, you don't need to have all this talking.

Everyone thinks they can write a play; you just write down what happened to you. But the art of it is drawing from all the moments of your life.