**A screenwriter’s currency is a finished script. Not an outline, a take, a beat sheet, a rough draft. A finished script.** (Outstanding Screenplays)
**ACT 3 resolves the conflict -- so what is the conflict that needs to be resolved? That’s the key. Then find the most interesting and emotional way to resolve that conflict.** (William MARTELL)
**Be decisive in your screenwriting. Make choices. About story, plot, characters, and moments. Everything. Be specific and confident. Every strong choice makes each subsequent choice easier because it eliminates millions of other choices. It’s the non-choices that drag you down.** (Tom VAUGHAN)
***Dialogue is the last element. Once you solve structure and story, then you can spend your time working on dialogue. (Jeffrey LIEBER)
***Don’t write what other people want. Figure out what YOU have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer. (Barbara KINGSLOVER)
**Dreams are lovely, but passion is what an artist needs -- a passion for the work. That’s all that can carry you through the hard times.** (Ursula LE GUIN)
**Every five to ten pages, I want a big fist to come out of the screenplay and punch the reader in the gut.** (Allan DURAND)
***Good dialogue comes from character development. The better you know your character, the more specific the dialogue will feel. (Chris McCOY)
***I open a document and start brain dumping anything I can think of, all my questions, all my inspiration, all my ideas… Next I open a new document and do what I call a barf draft… This raw draft is the clay that I’ve pulled up from the riverbed. (Meg LeFauve)
**If I could say anything, it’s KEEP GOING. Don’t go back and fix that scene, that dialogue. Just write the next word.** (Anna Hamilton PHELAN)
***If you can get in touch with who you are as a writer, this is huge. What do you want to write? What’s your point of view? How would you tell that story? Tell those stories in your own echo chamber, and tell many of them.*** (Jessica BENDINGER)
**If writing 10 pages is impossible, write 1 page. If writing 1 page is impossible, write a paragraph.** (William MARTELL)
**Make ACT 1 a mystery, ACT 2 a thriller, ACT 3 an action film. Pretty good formula for a commercial genre movie.** (Chris SPARLING)
**Make me forget I’m sitting in a cinema. Make me forget I’m reading a screenplay. Make me feel as if what is happening on screen is happening to ME.** (William MARTELL)
***Stories can entertain, sometimes teach or argue a point. But for me the essential thing is that they communicate feelings. That they appeal to what we share as human beings across our borders and divides. (Kazuo ISHIGURO)
**The highest kind of writing belongs to the realm of grace. You may happen upon it without realizing this is the work through which your whole life will sing. We should always be ready, be humble. Creativity should always be a form of prayer.** (Ben OKRI)
**The more complex you make your secondary characters, the more lifelike and involving your story will be.** (Donald MAAS)
**The more you know about your story’s characters, the more likely their respective voices will emerge.** (Scott MYERS)
***The secret to screenwriting is short sentences, small words, and BIG pictures. (William KELLEY)
**There are many writing paths. Here are two of them: “Write what they’re buying or sell them your dream.” (Scott MYERS)
**You’re only going to get noticed by following your own instincts and writing the thing that only you can write.** (Nancy MEYER)
***Writers write while dreamers procrastinate. (Besa KOSOVA)
***Writing is about struggling through and learning and finding out what it is about writing itself that you really love. (Laura KASISCHKE)
***Writing is not a matter of time, but a matter of space. If you don’t keep space in your head for writing, you won’t write even if you have the time. (Katerina STOYKOVA KLEMER)
**Writing needs to be its own reward! Not fame or praise or money -- you don’t control those things. You DO control how much you write every day.** (William MARTELL)