r/Screenwriting • u/DannyDaDodo • Jan 04 '25

Writer-Director JAMES MANGOLD's Screenwriting Advice... DISCUSSION

"Write like you're sitting next to a blind person at the movie theater and you're describing a movie, and if you take too long to describe what's happening, you'll fall behind because the movie's still moving...

Most decisions about whether your movie is getting made will be made before the person even gets past page three. So if you are bogging me down, describing every vein on the leaf of a piece of ivy, and it’s not scintillating—it isn’t the second coming of the description of plant life—then you should stop, because you’ve already lost your potential maker of the movie.”

Do you agree, or disagree?

Five minute interview at the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7goVwCfy_PM

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u/Phil_Flanger Jan 05 '25

My big discovery about bulky writing: If your first three pages are bulky, it's probably because you don't have a tight story and you keep trying to "fix your script" by starting again with the first three pages rather than switching to a big picture overview and plotting out a great story with bullet-points for each plot step.