Five tips for screenwriters

Each year at BAFTA, we host a series of Screenwriters’ Lectures, bringing together the finest writers of today to discuss how their written pages comes to life on screen. Here, find out what directors, actors and producers have learnt from these screenwriters, and how you can implement their best practices in your own work.

Taylor Hackford says: “Tony Gilroy writes smart and clean. There’s no cutesy bullshit on the page – just incisive dialogue and minimal description, which propel you deep inside his characters and narrative… His terse, intelligent style cuts right to the quick of today’s cynical, narcissistic society.”

Lone Scherfig looks up to screenwriter and author Nick Hornby, saying: “Maybe it’s Nick’s modesty and allergy to anything pretentious that explains the minimalism in his scripts. They are, at the same time, airy and dense. His dialogue and prose is usually dry and precise, but on rare occasions there is space for a wonderful effect: Nick’s setting characters free when spilling their beans, or letting himself divert into long, meticulously detailed description.”

It’s also important for a writer to collaborate with the actors bringing their story to life. Kevin Spacey says Beau Willimon “is a writer who understands drama, who believes in the power of what an actor in a dark space can do with words. He understands breath, beats, pause, the music of dialogue and the value of silence; but more than that he appreciates and understands the actors’ custom.”

Reflecting on why a writer should be open to change, Jonathan Demme points to Susannah Grant as a prime example. He says: “She proves quite quickly to be an exquisitely open and flexible collaborator, a merciful queen of the medium and an auteur who knows where to draw the line between open, free collaboration and adherence to themes and narratives too personal to even think about diverting from.”

Eric Fellner CBE chooses Emma Thompson as a writer he looks up to, saying: “She will bravely, and in no uncertain terms, tell you when she thinks you are wrong, but will also embrace and enhance every good idea you throw at her. We adore working with her as we know that the world will not only be great but the process will be hugely enjoyable and usually take you places you wouldn’t expect.”

Lived experience can be a wealth of inspiration for writers. About David S Gover, Guillermo del Toro says: “David is something of a pioneer. He has a unique connection with the zeitgeist of US pop culture… He creates characters that fuse pulp, comics, hard-boiled fiction and street culture and has an innate understanding of the cultural pulse of the here and now.”

Similarly, Paul Abbott says that Jimmy McGovern has “always written women beautifully because he surrounds himself with the best of them, at home and in his company.”

Steve Martin reflects on Nancy Meyers’ ability to keep the script authentic, saying: “As is typical with Nancy’s movies, [the part she offered me] was sophisticated and accurate to human behaviour. She writes quirkiness very well without it looking too exaggerated. She writes real people.”

Experimenting with the rules of screenwriting can often pay off. “[I was] immediately sucked into this intense little world of the criminal subculture in London,” David Cronenberg says about working with Steven Knight. He adds: “In a sense, Steve reinvented the crime movie, because the [Eastern Promises] script accessed all the great parts of that genre while inverting and subverting them in an interesting way.”