Final Draft Blog

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Read interviews with the pros, catch up with industry news, and listen to Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast by Final Draft.

Dialogue Choices and Dual Dialogue

April 18, 2022

In real life, people don’t speak in perfectly rendered and well-orchestrated dialogue. Not in most cases, anyway. The way we converse with others can vary depending on whom we’re speaking with: If we speak to an employer or authority figure, we’ll be...

Storyboarding Tips for Starting a Script

March 11, 2022

You have a story to tell and maybe even have images in your head. But maybe you’re still learning scriptwriting and when it comes to storyboard creation — which is important if your story is visually driven — you’re still a novice. So, let’s dive int...

5 Screenwriting Takeaways From Hulu's 'Pen 15'

September 23, 2020

Sometimes the state of the world may make adults think we have a monopoly on existential dread, but Pen15 is here to remind us that junior high schoolers have it pretty bad, too. The show's big hook—two women staring down middle age yet effortlessly ...

Write On with Writer-Director Isabella Eklöf

February 20, 2019

With the support of the Danish Film Institute, Swedish writer-director Isabella Eklöf premiered her feature debut ‘Holiday’ at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. Eklöf discusses her creative and development process and her overall career in filmmaking.

The Weekend Movie Takeaway: February 11, 2019

February 12, 2019

Following several stagnant weeks at the box office, the industry was looking to kick back into gear over the weekend. Yet even with new titles on offer — one of them the sequel to a box office blockbuster — the takings were less than encouraging.

All the Write Moves: Velvet Buzzsaw

February 12, 2019

Cinematic satire has become something of a lost art. During the so-called “age of irony” in the 90s, the notion of presenting exaggeration as a means of revealing hypocrisy (or other social foibles) became somewhat redundant. Close to two decades lat...

All the Write Moves: Glass

February 5, 2019

M. Night Shyamalan, modern king of the twist ending, outdid himself with the final scene of Split (2016) — his surprise hit about a serial killer with multiple personalities — by connecting the picture to Unbreakable (2000), his cult-favorite thrille...

The Hero's Journey: Aquaman

January 25, 2019

Within the first fifteen minutes, we realize Aquaman is a superhero genre script, an origin story, and a buddy movie all rolled into two hours and 30 minutes. That is a hefty haul for most writers, but David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick and Will Beall h...

All the Write Moves: If Beale Street Could Talk

January 21, 2019

Like his previous film, the Oscar-winning drama Moonlight (2016), Barry Jenkins’ new picture, If Beale Street Could Talk, might seem like a difficult artifact from which to extract screenwriting lessons. While both films have received considerable ac...