How to Use Go Into The Story (Part 2): Read Scripts

Some end of the year advice for blog readers.

With over 30,000 Go Into The Story articles, here’s a logical question:

HOW THE HELL DO I USE THIS STUFF?

An end of the year series to help.

Part 2: Read Scripts

Many years ago, I coined this screenwriting mantra: Watch movies. Read scripts. Write pages.

Seriously, you can learn the craft just by doing these three things.

Today some tips on how to use Go Into The Story resources to help you read — and more importantly learn — from scripts.

Go Into The Story Script Reading and Analysis Series: A bi-weekly series dedicated to reading movie scripts and analyzing them. Hit the link for access to over 100 movies broken down by Plot, Character, Dialogue, Theme, etc.

Go Into The Story Interviews: Over the years, I’ve interviewed 200+ Hollywood professionals, most of them screenwriters and in almost every discussion, we dig down into one or more of their scripts. Go inside writers’ minds!

Great Scenes: Dozens and dozens of movie scenes, most of them featuring script and video.

How to Read a Screenplay: There’s reading a script. Then there’s really reading it. This 7 part series provides a systematic approach on how to drill into and analyze a screenplay.

Movie Script Scene-By-Scene Breakdowns: One of the best ways to understand a screenplay’s structure and there are dozens of breakdowns — downloadable and like everything else on this site free.

But I hear you crying in the wilderness: Where can I find official movie scripts that can be downloaded legally? Why on Go Into The Story, of course. Go here to access 100+ movie scripts made public by studios, production companies, and financiers over the last several years.

I cannot emphasize enough the importance of reading scripts. Yet of the three keys — Watch movies. Read scripts. Write pages. — my guess is this aspect of learning the craft is the one most often ignored or minimized.

Don’t be that guy or gal.

READ SCRIPTS!!!

For Part 1: Watch Movies, go here.

Tomorrow: How to Use Go Into The Story (Part 3): Write Pages.