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.

Write On: 'NCIS: Origins' Showrunners David J. North and Gina Lucita Monreal

April 17, 2025

“If you can make the twists [in the story] hit your character in an emotional way and set up their emotional arc, then when the case twist intersects with them, if it’s hitting them in the deepest way, in the most unexpected way, maybe – then you’ve ...

Write On: Big Break 2024 Grand Prize Winners Laura Kroeger and Maia Mulcahy

April 9, 2025

“I think it was more like a litmus test of, where is the script? How would it be received? With this script, I was a quarter finalist in some competitions, and this was obviously the most exciting, the winning… I just wanted to really put my best foo...

Write On: 'Dying for Sex' Co-Creator & Co-Showrunner Kim Rosenstock

April 9, 2025

On today’s episode of Write On, we chat with Kim Rosenstock, co-creator and co-showrunner for the new limited series, Dying For Sex, starring Michelle Williams, Jenny Slate and Sissy Spacek. Based on a true story, Dying for Sex is about a woman diagn...

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 ...

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...

Write On: Long Bright River Showrunner Nikki Toscano

March 7, 2025

“With an adaptation, you can never give back your first read. So, what are you taking away? What fills your soul? Why do you want to tell this story? And then that becomes sort of the North Star. And I’m tethered more by that North Star than by the a...

Write On: Comedy Writing with Brent Forrester

February 13, 2025

“My recommendation to anybody who is writing animation is to take advantage of the things you can do in animation that you can’t do in live action, which is to spend an infinite amount of money, right? If you and I are going to write a scene and you ...

Write On: 'The Performance' Co-Writer Josh Salzberg

January 29, 2025

“Fugler [Robert Carlyle] was a character that I really connected with from the beginning. I know it sounds a little strange that the Nazi was my way into this, but it really was that idea of, ‘How can we get inside his head and make sure that he’s a ...

Write On: 'Inside Out 2' Co-Writers Meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein

January 24, 2025

“People think sequels are easier, and I’m like, ‘No, no, it’s much harder. It is much harder to write.’ They have never written sequels, those people, because you need to do everything as well as the first and yet better, and go to new places, follow...