Final Draft Blog

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Cocaine Bear Writer Jimmy Warden on Creating Empathy for a Coked-Up Bear on a Rampage

March 4, 2023

Cocaine Bear is a hilarious romp about two potentially alarming things: a ferocious bear and a massive amount of cocaine. Put them together and you get one of the wildest, most absurd, genre-busting films ever made. The idea is so ludicrous, it proba...

How To Write Naturalistic Dialogue

February 25, 2023

If it’s one thing I’ve seen aspiring screenwriters struggle with most over the years, it’s how to write naturalistic dialogue. Oftentimes their scripts might have good ideas or memorable sequences, but when the characters speak, their dialogue comes ...

An Ant-Man Retrospective: Origins, Quantum Realms and the Importance of Always Losing

February 22, 2023

When Ant-Man was introduced in 2015, it was the twelfth movie in the continuing Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) that has brought in billions of box office dollars, TV shows on Disney+ and countless products. While the world had accepted a Spider-Man,...

How To Give Your Screenplay Your Voice

February 19, 2023

In my article, Finding Your Voice, I wrote about my first major spec sale and how I attributed it to my voice among other factors. I explained that the voice is an essentially an X factor: a distinctive quality that can help your material rise to the...

How To Find New Ways Into Old Stories

February 19, 2023

You’re beginning to write a screenplay involving a familiar concept or genre, and you’re struggling to make it different from other films you’ve seen before. How many ways can you tell a zombie apocalypse story? What’s a different way to approach a c...

Setting: It's Much More Than Just a Simple Slug Line

February 19, 2023

INT. or EXT.? DAY or NIGHT? The choices of what information to include in a scene heading appear to be limited, making it seemingly one of the easiest elements of a script to dash off quickly so you can move on to the meatier stuff of scenes and char...

Writer/Director of contained thriller ‘Daughter,’ Corey Deshon, on writing only what interests him and doing it his way.

February 14, 2023

The old saying goes you can't choose your family and for one myterious young woman, only known by the name, Sister, (played by Queen Sugar’s Vivien Ngo), this will soon become a horrid reality. Written and directed by Corey Deshon, Daughter tells the...

Take 5: ‘Shotgun Wedding’ Uses Tried-and-True Tropes For a Modern Action Rom-Com

February 10, 2023

Darcy and Tom are soon-to-be bride and groom and have chosen to have their luxurious destination wedding on a Philippines island. Unfortunately, the wedding guests are taken hostage by a group of pirates who want $45 million.

A Look at Lincoln and How to Write Historical Figures into Movie Characters

February 10, 2023

In a nod to Abraham Lincoln's birthday on the 12th, we wanted to take a look at how the nation's most written about president has been portrayed in film and what lessons you can take away when writing about a historical figures.