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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.

Spec Spotlight: Joe Ballarini, Writer of "Skyward" - Part II

April 25, 2017

“For every spec you see that I have sold, I have not sold a lot of stuff. I’ve written a ton of things that weren’t that good, which was me chasing the spec market.”

Spec Spotlight: Joe Ballarini, Writer of "Skyward" - Part I

April 24, 2017

Joe Ballarini has sold a lot of spec scripts. But Skyward, the spec he sold recently to Fox, may be the most consequential one yet. Every writer has that “one special story that you keep in your heart,” says Ballarini. “And this is one of them.”

Screenwriting Role Models: Dan O'Bannon

April 20, 2017

Many talented people helped to make Alien a landmark film, but screenwriter Dan O’Bannon created the blueprint.

Spec Spotlight: Nick Yarborough on LETTERS FROM ROSEMARY KENNEDY

April 18, 2017

Nick Yarborough is making a splash in the Hollywood scene with his upcoming dark biopics Letters from Rosemary Kennedy and The Secret Life of Dr. James Miranda Barry. A rare native to California, he took time to speak with Final Draft about his exper...

Spec Spotlight: Jared Cohn talks Lynyrd Skynyrd Biopic

April 13, 2017

In October 1977, the rock-n-roll world was shaken when the plane carrying band members of Lynyrd Skynyrd crashed in Mississippi. The tragic event killed three original band members as well as severly injuring the surviving band member Gary Rossington...

Screenwriting Role Models: John Hodge

April 12, 2017

With T2 Trainspotting, screenwriter John Hodge pulls off a feat other writers envy: a character-focused sequel set – and released – twenty years after the original that’s poignant and funny, even with a plot that’s beside the point. But Hodge, who ea...

Screenwriting Role Models: Paul Schrader

April 6, 2017

Paul Schrader is one of the most important screenwriters of the twentieth century and helped to define the New Hollywood of the 1970s. Unlike most filmmakers, Schrader didn’t grow up loving movies. In fact, he had not seen one until he was in his lat...