Screenwriting 101: Eric Heisserer

“I think a really strong script that has a crackling voice and a unique character can go a long way. But it if it has a solid story concept that suggests a poster or a trailer, a story concept you can pitch to a friend in an elevator…that will make you a lot of money in this town. It used to be that there were two types of stories, two types of movie pitches. Pick the pitch that starts with ‘What if?’ What if we’re all just plugged into some computer system, for example. And there’s another story that starts with ‘There’s this guy.’ The indie movie world has a lot of movies that start, ‘There’s this guy,’ and a lot of big studio tentpoles that start out with ‘What if.’ But I’ve discovered that my favorite stories are the ones that start out, ‘What if there’s this guy,’ and somehow it merges those two together.”

— Eric Heisserer

Go Into The Story interview, April 2013

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