Screenwriting 101: Craig Mazin

“There’s a point to each scene. There’s a takeaway. There’s a reason that scene exists. If there isn’t, then you shouldn’t be writing that scene. It doesn’t belong in the movie. So I want the scene to have a purpose. I want there to be a takeaway, and I want that scene to drive me to the next one inexorably. I think of the scene as its own little movie, with a beginning, middle, and end. I think of the scene as having a back‑and‑forth, a shift in the power dynamic. I think of the scene as something in which a character enters on one end thinking or believing or doing one kind of thing and leaving the other end of the scene changed somehow. I think of a scene as finishing with ‘so then, rather than ‘and then,’ and in this way, we keep moving through.”

— Craig Mazin

From Go Into The Story interview, August 2013

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