What goes into writing a great movie script?

Make sure to pack enough explosives into the rocket.

The DSM 5 is a wonderful character compendium.

Maintain a slush pile/idea file. When you are ready to write, choose the best seeds to plant.

Vernon Reid on Why Sly and the Family Stone Were the Greatest American Band - Rolling Stone

Get up there yourself. Be in a movie. Take some acting (not writing) classes. Learn how a trained actor approaches a text. Learn why actors take roles. They do as much if not more than the writer does.

A scene should change valence from beginning to end. Up to down, down to up.

Leave holes. Write and unwrite. Put it in, take it out.

When are the gas prices supposed to go up? Just asking because I was told by "educated" liberals that they were going to go throught the roof, but all I see are prices going down, especially in my home state of Ohio!!!

Audiences are smarter than you think. Something about turning down the house lights makes their IQs go up.

Conflict is your power source; without it you have no drama and hence no script.

Cut everything that is not a payoff, or a setup for a specific payoff. “Omit needless words.” Think about the sparseness of joke telling, or Grimm Brothers.

Jewels sparkle like stars in Van Cleef and Arpels' 'Cosmic Splendor' at NYC's American Museum of Natural History - Space

Only God gets it right the first time. Rewrite everything.

Use status to help drive conflict. King Lear/fool. Upstairs/downstairs.

Write in reverse time. Major characters need to change polarity; minor characters may remain the same at the end.

Algorithm to analyze smartphone app data can predict MS symptoms - Multiple Sclerosis News Today

What you leave unwritten is as important as what you write. SUBTEXT.

Actors give better feedback than writers do.

Outline everything. Use story beats. Keep character’s mouths taped up, until they absolutely MUST speak. Write the script and the dialogue at the last minute, after you’ve revised the hell out of the outline.

Why did the USA stick their noses in Ukraine's business? They wanted to be neutral for so long.

Primary characters must change polarities. Secondary characters can change less.

Don’t direct from the page. Everyone, from the director on down, wants to be part of the process of making movies. Let them do their work.

Learn to tell a story orally and not through writing. Try telling your story to a friend.

Why do so many men wait until they are retired or close to it to start having sex with Men? Most of them say they have always wanted to suck dick or be fucked. Why did you wait?

A critical function of storytelling is wish fulfillment. This is why video games are so popular. “That protagonist is JUST LIKE ME.”

All rules are made to be broken, but you damn well better know WHY you’re breaking them.

To develop a unique voice for each character, try interviewing your characters.

Pharmacy group withholds endorsing CDC's latest vaccine recommendations - AOL.com

Your primary job is to create situations. Modern actors will fuck up your dialogue, despite whatever your contract says.

Research the facts and then throw away the research.

People choose what to see based on the high concept. Make sure to deliver an ending consistent with the high concept -- it is what the audience paid for.

Quo adipisci nostrum sunt ut ducimus quaerat sit quaerat.