Scriptwriting Challenges Quotes

The ideal time for writing a [television] script is four days, though sometimes it has to be two or three days depending on the deadline. If it's two days, sometimes there are things I see that don't work as well. If I have two weeks, the scripts get kind of flabby and lack the adrenaline that a sense of deadline fills you with.

Writing screenplays is incredibly hard. I can't call it joy. Writing Novels? Joy. Directing? Joy. Writing Screenplays? That's where you pay all your dues.

I think there's something strange about writing a script I've written many, many scripts - dozens and dozens of scripts - and every time I start one, I think to myself: 'why in the world do I think I know how to do this?'

I can do movies maybe that have already been written, but I can't do anything for months at a time.

There are a couple hard things. One, getting a funny idea that people can relate to; a funny idea or a funny script; there's a million pitches.

Sometimes in TV, it can get really stale, especially if you're doing these 23-episode years. It's a lot of work, and to put your family through that, on a location, is not always the greatest thing in the world.

I get sent horror scripts every week and most of them are putrid. A lot of people think it's an easy medium but it's not. Not if you want to make ones that last.

As an actor going into screenwriting, I was able to understand what type of dialogue feels natural. A lot of the time, as an actor, you don't have the freedom to change what your lines are, and they can often be very unnatural or difficult to portray in a real light.

Honestly, one-hour drama is the hardest format there is. I think it's harder than movies, and it's harder than half-hour comedy.

I've always known that if I recorded an album, it would come out, and people would enjoy it! Whereas if I wrote a movie script, chances are better than even that I'd just be another guy in L.A. with a movie script in his drawer.

It takes so long to write a script, thinking to yourself, "Am I wasting my time? Am I putting everything into this thing that maybe just won't ever exist?" I always think, God, acting is so much easier. At least for acting you have the source material already.

They are just really stupid people in Hollywood. You write them a script, and they say they love it, they absolutely love it. Then they say, 'But doesn't it need a small dog, and an Eskimo, and shouldn't it be set in New Guinea?' And you say, 'But it is a sophisticated romantic comedy set in Paris.'

Lots of scripts are written and not made, even scripts that people want to make.

In Britain, we haven't got enough money to make these long-running shows. We always do little mini ones. You have more control as an actor over what you want to do with it. On these you drive yourself mad trying to know what's going to happen, because the writers don't.

The hardest thing for me is getting started. If I'm writing a script, really 90 per cent of it would be just walking around, climbing the walls, just trying to put the idea together. Then the final 10 per cent would be writing it.

A lot of films that have been adapted from books stop serving you because they become different. I mean, they are different entities in themselves, but artistically, what you're trying to achieve with a film is so very different to what you're trying to achieve with a book, and the way when you write a script is so very different on paper to how it seems on a screen.

It's so much easier to write for an actor than for an imaginary character and then try to fit that character to an actor. It doesn't work very often in my experience.