Video: 20 Screenwriting and Directing Tips from Steven Spielberg

A compilation of clips featuring the storytelling insights of one of cinema’s most notable filmmakers.

Go to the IMDb page for Steven Spielberg. Take note of these numbers:

• 181 producing credits
• 57 directing credits
• 27 writing credits

That is a remarkable career — so far! — of one of the cinema’s great storytellers. Jaws, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, West Side Story, clearly this is a filmmaker who knows a thing or two about storytelling. This latest Outstanding Screenplays video is a compilation of clips featuring Spielberg providing twenty tips on screenwriting and directing.

Here are the tips:

• Dream for a living.
• The goal is to bring together people of different ideologies under one roof and make them walk out of the theater feeling the same emotions.
• Learn how to be a storyteller first.
• Life is one long string of character defining moments. Listen to your intuition when facing them.
• If you’re making a historical movie, it needs to be told as truthfully as possible.
• Think back to your previous film or an idea you had and look at it from another angle and ask yourself “what if this happened?”
• Almost every story is a reimagining of an older classical story, told from a contemporary perspective.
• Ask the actor to give you too much at first, then bring them down to life-level.
• Bend the rules to learn about filmmaking.
• Make your film a conversation with the younger generation to inspire change and to inspire the way they make films.
• Musical sequences, even more so than action scenes, require a lot of mathematics and equations so you need to find good collaborators that can help you solve it.
• Stay devoted to your original idea.
• Sometimes your dream whispers, it doesn’t shout. Listen to the whisper.
• Pay attention to the past. Respect the films that have come before you.
• Aim to tell a story, rather than trying to sell a product.
• You can express yourself with very little. Use everything available to you.
• When you fail, immediately throw yourself back into your next project.
• It’s okay to first steal something you like and later on find your voice.
• Create suspense by not showing the threat for some time.
• When an idea hits you like a ton of bricks, start writing scenes and put the story together immediately.

Of course, I zeroed in on the advice directly applicable to screenwriting. I particularly liked this one: Learn how to be a storyteller first.

I was interviewed for a podcast recently and recounted the serendipitous manner I found my way into screenwriting (“I can do that”). Without any sort of formal training in the craft, I was confident I could write a screenplay because I had been telling and writing stories since my youth: short stories, jokes, songs, sermons. Through practice, I had learned the rudimentary skills of storytelling. Over the years, I’d like to think I’ve gained more insight and abilities as a writer, but I think Spielberg is right: The very foundation of what we do ought to be an instinct for telling a story. Learn that first.

Lots of other good advice. Check out the video to hear more from Steven Spielberg.

Twitter: @outscreenplays.

For more Outstanding Screenplays videos, go here.

For 100s more interviews with screenwriters and filmmakers, go here.