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.

5 Screenwriting Lessons from Golden-Globe Winner ‘The Brutalist’

January 27, 2025

This year’s winner of the Golden Globe for Best Picture (Drama) and Best Performance by a Male Actor for Adrien Brody (Drama), The Brutalist has become one of the most intriguing films to come out of 2024. Writer/Director Brady Corbet’s mid-century t...

Big Break Contest Judge Jeff Portnoy On Why You Should Enter

January 24, 2025

According to Jeff Portnoy, literary manager at Bellevue Productions and a judge for the 2025 Final Draft Big Break Screenwriting Contest, what makes Final Draft’s screenwriting competition stand out from other screenwriting contests is its emphasis o...

How Actor Julia Stiles Wrote Her First Feature Screenplay

January 21, 2025

For Julia Stiles, years of performing as an actor have provided a unique advantage in her latest creative venture—screenwriting and directing.

Write On: 'The Boys' Creator and Showrunner Eric Kripke

January 17, 2025

“The most subversive thing this show could do is make you cry… If you really boil down television, really cook it in the pan, it’s the character business. I’m in the character business. Movies are in the plot and spectacle business, for television, t...

Write On: 'Only Murders in the Building' Co-Creator & Showrunner John Hoffman

January 3, 2025

“There’s no greater laugh than when you’re at your most vulnerable. You’re at a funeral, or you’re in church and something’s happening and there’s great reprieve from the most human moments through humor. And even in those moments, something is funny...

New Year's Writing Resolutions

December 30, 2024

Congratulations writers! You have reached the end of another writing year. Regardless of what stage you are at in your writing career, it’s important to take the time to recognize all you have accomplished in 2024.

Write On: TV Writing with Laura Eason

November 25, 2024

“About 12 years ago, I had my very first meeting to staff. It was a show being run by a playwright named Beau Willimon and he’d done one season of a show that hadn’t dropped yet and they were going to do this crazy new model where the whole season wa...

Write On: 'Colin From Accounts' Co-Creators Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer

November 21, 2024

“We never wanted to make a show about dogs. We wanted to make a show about people. And then secondary to that, people who love dogs. We made sure we had some of Colin [the dog, in season two], like there’s that lovely episode in seven where Gordon be...

Write On: 'A Real Pain' with Writer/Director Jesse Eisenberg

November 15, 2024

“What I wanted to do with this movie was take this interesting relationship that I have been exploring over the course of my writing, over 20 years, and this dynamic, and set it against the backdrop of something so objectively worse than anything the...