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.

Spec Spotlight: Luke Paradise, Writer of "The Prodigal"

June 13, 2017

What happens when a kid from Arizona devours westerns, crime novels, and comic books? If you’re Luke Paradise, you write The Prodigal, about a soldier who returns to his hometown, Tucson, for revenge against the military corporation responsible for h...

Write On with Good Fear Manager and Big Break Judge Scott Stoops on His Love for Screenwriting Contests and How to Grab His Attention as a Writer

June 7, 2017

Scott Stoops, literary manager at Good Fear and veteran Big Break Screenwriting Contest Judge, talks how to hook him in the first 10 pages of a read.

The Writing of Wonder Woman

June 5, 2017

Beautiful as Aphrodite, wise as Athena . . . With such accolades describing Wonder Woman on everything from T-shirts to coffee cups, it’s no wonder that fashioning a story about her seemed as intimidating as scaling Mount Olympus. Yet screenwriter Al...

Pen Densham's 10 Secrets to selling your script... and not your soul!

June 2, 2017

As a four-year-old, I was impressed by seeing my parents making short 35mm films for the movie theaters, even riding a live seven-foot alligator in one of them. Those experiences caused me to have a lifelong desire to conjure visual and emotional mag...

Sanjeev Sirpal On Random Tropical Paradise & How He's Reviving Original Comedies

June 1, 2017

Sanjeev Sirpal takes us from landing his first job in Los Angeles to what got him "in the room", which ultimately led to writing original comedies that actually got made. "Random Tropical Paradise" is an epic journey about a jilted groom and his best...

Montages In Screenwriting: When and How to Write a Montage in a Script

May 30, 2017

Technically speaking, montages are more the domain of an editor, splicing together different scenes to illustrate a passage of time. Montages, however, became such a fixture in the cinematic vocabulary that it’s not unusual to find them in screenplay...

Tips For Writing Period Dialogue

May 16, 2017

What people say, and how they say it, tells us a lot.

Dwain Worrell on "The Wall" and how to wow them in the end

May 11, 2017

Listen as Drew Goddard gives Insider View host, Pete D'Alessandro the scoop on writing the critically acclaimed The Martian as well as plans for Daredevil Season 2.

Manager Marc Manus talks unearthing gems and the scripts that catch his eye

May 5, 2017

Big Break judge and Zero Gravity literary manager Marc Manus discusses how he got his start, what types of scripts excite him, and how he “goes to the mat” for his screenwriters.