Final Draft Blog

All the tips, tricks and information you need to inspire your writing!
Read interviews with the pros, catch up with industry news, and listen to Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast by Final Draft.

5 Tips For Handling Exposition in Your Screenplay

January 10, 2023

One of the trickiest and biggest challenges for a screenwriter is how to best handle exposition. What is exposition exactly? It’s the insertion of expository information into a narrative; this information can be about the characters’ past or current ...

5 Tips To Staying in Screenwriting Shape

December 22, 2022

It’s not always easy to stay inspired and maintain a creative mindset on a regular basis. Many times screenwriters feel burnt out or spent after an extended period of writing. They’ll stare at an empty page and not feel the same excitement they initi...

What ‘The Santa Clause’ franchise can teach us about story

November 21, 2022

Over the course of the last 28 years, Tim Allen has donned the red suit and appeared on the big and small screen as Santa Claus in the Disney IP The Santa Clause. Built on the premise that a corporate toy executive is legally bound to become Santa, t...

Staffing the writer's room with 'Let the Right One In' showrunner and EP Andrew Hinderaker

November 11, 2022

How far would you go to protect your child? Would you lie? Cheat? Steal? How about kill? These are the questions behind Amazon Prime’s latest horror drama, Let the Right One In. LTROI follows the story of Mark Kane (Demián Bichir) and his forever you...

Adapting ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ and the evolution of the war movie

November 11, 2022

Author Erich Maria Remarque would have never wanted the films based on his highly-acclaimed 1929 novel All Quiet on the Western Front to be considered adventure films. On the first pages of the great novel, he even writes that death is not an adventu...

Write On with 'The Northman' Co-Writers Robert Eggers and Sjón

November 10, 2022

From visionary director Robert Eggers, The Northman follows a young Viking prince (Alexander Skarsgård) on a quest to avenge his father's murder. Eggers and his co-writer, Sjón, chatted with Final Draft about the collaborative process of working on t...

5 Tips to Writing a Great Third Act

November 9, 2022

A film industry professional continues reading a screenplay because it has a great first act, but it’s the third act that’s likely to stick with them afterwards. When you finish watching a film, isn’t it the ending that’s freshest in your mind? It’s ...

Take 5: ‘Hocus Pocus 2’ scares off nostalgia for a new generation

October 7, 2022

Nostalgia is big business. The biggest movie of 2022 continues to be Top Gun: Maverick, which swims in nostalgia. Some of the most highly anticipated TV series to stream this year have been A League of Their Own and Cobra Kai, so it's no wonder that ...

‘Thirteen Lives’ writer on turning true stories into emotional narratives

October 3, 2022

For over 40 years, William Nicholson has been writing screenplays, two of which garnered Oscar® nominations. His latest film Thirteen Lives matches him up with Academy Award-winning director Ron Howard in a film delivering an emotional adventure as E...