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How to Write a Mystery in a Screenplay
Write captivating mystery screenplays using this guide, exploring sub-genres, essential ingredients, and expert tips to engage your audience.| blog.finaldraft.com
With Spike Lee’s newest film, Highest 2 Lowest, the acclaimed New York director not only reteams for the fifth time with his Academy Award-winning muse, the great Denzel Washington, but joins a lineage of distinguished filmmakers who have adapted the works of legendary Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. The new film is a reimagining of Kurosawa’s 1963 classic, High and Low, about a business tycoon thrown into a moral crisis when his chauffeur’s son is kidnapped and held for an enormou...| Final Draft Blog
Outlining for Screenwriting Success Have an idea for a movie or TV pilot and want to write a screenplay, but you don’t know where to begin? Whether you’re a professional screenwriter or a beginner, it’s best to outline beforehand. Outlining helps you figure out how you’re going to tell your story and structure it appropriately (e.g. most feature scripts follow the classic three-act structure). Not only does Final Draft offer industry standard formatting for feature and TV scripts,...| Final Draft Blog
Write captivating mystery screenplays using this guide, exploring sub-genres, essential ingredients, and expert tips to engage your audience.| blog.finaldraft.com
In my article “How Much Money Can You Make Selling a Screenplay,” I wrote about the return of the spec sale and how there were a handful of big sales in 2024. Well, it’s looking like 2025 is going to be even better for screenwriters who have written original screenplays.| Final Draft Blog
“The thing that started it all off was me saying [the character Toxie] should be a guy in a suit. In other words, let’s not do a computer-generated creature, let’s have a person in a suit and have that handmade, hand-stitched kind of quality to it where you can sort of see the seams a little bit and have that be part of the fun. I also said let’s have it be rated R. Hopefully y’all are not interested in a family-friendly PG-13 version of this movie, because that’s not what the fan...| Final Draft Blog
What Is a Beat Board? Perhaps you’ve seen images of a TV writer’s room and noticed a whiteboard with a bunch of sticky notes attached to it or handwritten Sharpie notes. Or maybe you’ve watched a behind-the-scenes featurette on a Blu-ray and noticed a cork board at a production company’s office and it was similarly covered with sticky notes or index cards. These boards are referred to as a “beat board” in the film and television industry. It’s extremely helpful to have a visua...| Final Draft Blog
It’s a feat to top the Black List, Hollywood’s list of favorite unproduced screenplays, any year. But what if you did it two years in a row? Travis Braun has been the only writer to accomplish this so far. In 2023, it was his horror script Bad Boy that won the top spot; in 2024, rom-com One Night Only was named the number-one work. Both are currently in development. Bad Boy has Ke Huy Quan and Lili Reinhart attached, while Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner are set to star in One Night Only...| Final Draft Blog
In 1982, a 22-year-old Eddie Murphy, who had already made a name for himself on Saturday Night Live, starred in his first movie: 48 Hrs. He played a criminal who was paroled for 48 hours teaming up with a rough and tough cop to help track down a killer. By the end of the movie, they are friends.| Final Draft Blog
The Coen Brothers have been major forces in American cinema for an astounding 40 years now, spanning genres from crime thriller to musical to stoner comedy, and always with a dark sense of humor. Though the Minnesota writing/directing/editing team of Joel and Ethan Coen haven’t made a film together since 2018’s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Joel is currently directing a film called Jack Of Spades starring Josh O’Connor in Scotland, and Ethan’s newest directorial effort, Honey Don’t!...| Final Draft Blog
Every great movie has at least one great set piece, that cinematic moment that stands the test of time and is forever identified as the core identity of the movie.| Final Draft Blog
Learn how to effectively use obstacles to create engaging conflict in your screenplay, enhancing both character arcs and narrative tension.| blog.finaldraft.com
Discover how Natalie Messier's Big Break TV win propelled her screenwriting career, the importance of persistence, treating writing as a second job, & more| blog.finaldraft.com
Selwyn Seyfu Hinds brings the novel Washington Black to life as a steampunk TV series on Hulu, exploring themes of identity, resilience, and freedom.| blog.finaldraft.com
5 screenwriting prep exercises that are key to the success of any screenplay. Learn how to visualize, research, and more before writing a single word.| blog.finaldraft.com
We talk with casting director David Guglielmo CSA, to find out how to make an impact on the person who could be most critical to getting that greenlight.| blog.finaldraft.com
The Write On podcast chats with 'Challengers' screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes, who talks about why tennis is such a good metaphor for relationships.| blog.finaldraft.com
In this episode of Write On, we speak to all three showrunners of 'Cobra Kai', Jon Hurwitz, Josh Heald and Hayden Schlossberg.| blog.finaldraft.com
Final Draft 13 is finally here! Check out all of the new features in Final Draft 13 that will help personalize and streamline your writing process.| blog.finaldraft.com
