Final Draft Blog

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'Black Bag': How to Write a Spy Movie that Sells

March 28, 2025

International intrigue. Secret agencies. Clandestine operations. Who doesn’t love a spy movie? From big action blockbusters like the Mission: Impossible and the Bourne Identity series, to smaller scale arthouse films like The Imitation Game and even ...

Write On: Paul William Davies - Creator and Showrunner of 'The Residence'

March 27, 2025

“I didn’t really set out to make Cordelia (Uzo Aduba) quirky. I just wanted to make her distinctive. I just really thought about who I wanted her to be and how I thought [birdwatching] would be an interesting way for her to approach her job. And the ...

How 'Severance' Changed a Writer’s Career

March 26, 2025

Dan Erickson is currently one of the hottest TV writers in the business. He created, co-writes, co-produces and serves as showrunner for the popular and acclaimed Apple TV+ series Severance (starring Adam Scott and executive produced and primarily di...

Playwriting vs. Screenwriting: What’s the Difference?

March 25, 2025

To the average person, screenwriting and playwriting may seem like interchangeable terms, with the only difference in their eyes being that a screenwriter is writing for the movies while a playwright is writing for the stage. The truth is that the tw...

How to Write Your Screenplay’s Opening Scene

March 24, 2025

The opening scene or sequence is perhaps the most important element of a screenplay, especially when it comes to beginning screenwriters trying to break into the industry. It’s the moment where an experienced industry insider reading your script can ...

‘Novocaine’: How to write an Action Movie with a Twist

March 21, 2025

It’s hard to write an original action movie. How different can car chases really be? And hasn’t a fight in a restaurant kitchen been done countless times already? Action movies can be a lot of fun, but creating a truly good story with action can be r...

How to Sell a Screenplay

March 20, 2025

Selling a screenplay is the ultimate goal for every screenwriter. The general process itself seems simple enough to most at first glance. You write a screenplay. You get that screenplay into the hands of decision-makers in Hollywood. They buy your sc...

Benjamin Kramer: How Big Break Fueled His Success

March 20, 2025

The goal of Final Draft’s Big Break Screenwriting Contest has always been to boost the screenwriting career of winners and finalists. For writer Benjamin Kramer, winning the 2021 Big Break Action/Adventure category was just the push he needed to not ...

Write On: Peter Katz - Manager & Producer, Story Driven

March 19, 2025

“Sameness is terrible. Your goal is to cut through it. If you have a unique perspective, you’re going to take vampires or anything that everybody thinks they know and do it in a way that’s really exciting and gets people really pumped up about it. Th...