Final Draft Blog

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Bobby Farrelly Says Comedy is About Flawed Character and Surprising Your Audience

March 7, 2023

Bobby Farrelly, along with his brother Peter Farrelly, are known for their iconic comedies like There’s Something About Mary, Dumb and Dumber, and Fever Pitch. These films have firmly established the brothers as one of America’s premiere comedy direc...

Big Break: Screenwriting Contest for Career Success in Film and TV

March 6, 2023

Is your screenplay or pilot contest-ready? With dozens of screenwriting contests out there, it’s important to consider which ones are worth your time and money. Over the past 20 years, the Big Break Screenwriting Contest has become one of the most re...

5 Ways Screenwriters Can Adapt to the Marketplace

March 5, 2023

The entertainment industry is in a constant state of flux and always has been thanks to emerging technology and evolving tastes. Whether you’re an aspiring or veteran screenwriter, it benefits you to be able to adapt to an ever-changing marketplace. ...

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...

Narration: How Voiceover Can Sometimes Make a Script Better

February 19, 2023

During my screenwriting education, we were urged to avoid the use of narrators in our scripts. There was a good reason for this: "baby writers" tend to over-rely on narrators to provide easy exposition or bypass actual character development as they s...

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...