Screenwriting 101: Jeff Lieber

“In my opinion, what separates good writers from great writers is the need to look at your own material and figure out what’s wrong with it. A lot of people finish a draft of a script and they go, ‘It’s done.’ They read it and they think, ‘It’s great!’ Really good writers look at it and go, ‘That doesn’t work,’ and then are willing to go back, fix and refine it. The ability to see what the problem is is the first great hurdle, then have the elasticity to come up with another way around it, and be willing to tear it up and put it back together again is where the great talent lies. Frankly, it’s why studios and networks want to hire people who’ve done it before because writing one script is… Everyone’s got one script in them, right? The question is, do you have the ability to look at what’s there and solve the problems as you go? That is something that takes time and learning.”

— Jeff Lieber

From Go Into The Story interview, August 16, 2013

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