Final Draft Blog

All the tips, tricks and information you need to inspire your writing!
Read interviews with the pros, catch up with industry news, and listen to Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast by Final Draft.

Write On with Big Break Grand Prize Feature Winner Steve Anthopoulos

March 3, 2020

2019 Big Break Grand Prize Feature Winner Steve Anthopoulos discusses his big moment on stage at our awards show, his experience on the grand prize tour, his first success story and more! The 2020 Big Break Contest is now open for submissions! Is thi...

Five Takeaways Classic: ‘Casablanca’

March 3, 2020

Your weekly break-down of a popular movie or television episode to see what a screenwriter—or any writer—can take away from what’s on screen: what worked, what didn’t, and how you can use what’s popular to craft better stories.

The Weekend Movie Takeaway: ‘The Invisible Man’ Is A Visible Triumph For Horror Movies At The Box Office

March 3, 2020

Original, urgent storytelling was the winner at the weekend box office, the results of which marked the emergence of a major new genre filmmaker: Leigh Whannell, the man behind the latest incarnation of The Invisible Man. The film surpassed all expec...

The Fast Five: Netflix and NBC Make Strategic Gambles, While ‘Lizzie McGuire’ Halts Production at Disney+

March 2, 2020

It's an interesting Fast Five this week. One streamer goes out of its way to launch a word-of-mouth hit just as another cancels one of its most anticipated shows. In other news, audiences will be able to deduce a character’s motives by the phone they...

5 Ways to Use Theme to Transcend Your Knottiest Story Problems

February 28, 2020

Author and screenwriter Steven Pressfield in his short book, “What Is Your Story About? The Centrality of Theme in the Creative Process”, relates a tale of an agent reading five hundred screenplays over the course of a year and not finding a single w...

The State Of Television Part 3: The Rise Of Streamers And The Opening For Niche Programming

February 27, 2020

House of Cards gets all the credit for building the streaming world we all live in by being the first original show on a streaming network. Too bad that's a filthy lie. Not only was House of Cards not the first, it wasn’t even the first on Netflix. A...

Five Takeaways From Hulu's 'High Fidelity'

February 26, 2020

Your weekly break-down of a popular movie or television episode to see what a screenwriter—or any writer, for that matter—can take away from what’s on screen: what worked, what didn’t, and how you can use what’s popular to craft better stories.

Write On with Screenwriting Career Coach Lee Jessup

February 25, 2020

Screenwriting career coach and guru Lee Jessup gives us a crash course on the spec market in the feature and television space, how to achieve authenticity as a writer, and much more. Lee Jessup is also a veteran sponsor of The Big Break Screenwriting...