Most screenwriting advice is noise. But every few decades a working screenwriter says something so exactly right that it survives them and keeps showing up in every writers' room, film school, and late-night group chat. Those are the ones worth stealing. Not the vague "show don't tell" platitudes, but the specific, load-bearing ideas that actually change how you write the next scene.
Here are the best, most widely documented tips from the people who earned the right to give them. For each one: what they mean, and how you use it today. No made-up quotes, no mystical nonsense. Just the stuff that works.
1. Aaron Sorkin: every scene is intention plus obstacle
Sorkin (The West Wing, The Social Network, A Few Good Men) has talked repeatedly, including in his MasterClass and countless interviews, about the two things he learned from studying drama: a character has an intention, and there's an obstacle in the way. That's the engine of a scene. Somebody wants something and something is stopping them from getting it.
It sounds almost too simple until you apply it. Look at any scene in your script that feels flat and ask: what does this person want in this exact moment, and what's blocking it? If you can't answer, the scene is decoration, not drama.
How to apply it: before you write a scene, write one line at the top. "X wants Y but Z is in the way." If you can't fill that in, you don't have a scene yet, you have two people talking. This one habit fixes more limp writing than any other on this list.
2. William Goldman: nobody knows anything
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Or run it now without an emailGoldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President's Men, The Princess Bride) gave us the most famous line in Hollywood: nobody knows anything. He meant that no one can reliably predict what will succeed. Studios greenlight sure things that flop and pass on scripts that become classics.
Why does this matter to you at the keyboard? Because it's permission. If nobody can predict the hit, then chasing what's "commercial" is a losing game. The move is to write the thing only you can write, execute it at a professional level, and let the coin flip happen with a script that's genuinely good rather than genuinely safe.
Goldman was also relentless about structure being the spine of everything (worth pairing with our breakdown of the three-act structure). The two ideas fit together: you can't control the market, so control the one thing you can, which is craft.
How to apply it: stop writing toward a trend. By the time a trend is visible, you're already late. Write the story you'd fight to see made, then make its structure bulletproof.
3. Robert McKee: story is about principles, not rules
McKee, whose Story seminar and book shaped a generation, draws a hard line between principles and rules. A rule says "you must do it this way." A principle says "this works, and here's why." Rules make you rigid. Principles make you free, because once you understand why something works you can bend it on purpose.
His core teaching is that story is built on a character pursuing an object of desire against forces of antagonism, and that the gap between expectation and result is where meaning lives. When a character acts expecting one outcome and reality delivers another, that gap is your story generating energy.
How to apply it: whenever you're tempted to follow a "rule," ask what principle it's protecting. Then decide if breaking it serves your story or just your ego. Plenty of great films broke the rules on purpose, but they understood what they were breaking.
4. Billy Wilder: know where you're going, and let the audience add it up
Wilder (Some Like It Hot, Sunset Boulevard, The Apartment) kept a set of screenwriting rules that have circulated for decades. Two stand out. First: know where you're going. He believed the ending should be clear to the writer early, because everything before it is a setup for it. Second, and this is the famous one: the audience is smart, never underestimate them; let them add two plus two together and they'll love you forever.
That second rule is a whole philosophy of subtext. Don't hand the audience the answer. Give them the pieces and trust them to connect the dots. The connection they make themselves lands harder than anything you spell out.
How to apply it: find every line where a character explains how they feel or what a scene means. Cut most of them. Let behavior and situation carry the meaning instead. And know your ending before you write your middle.
5. Nora Ephron: everything is copy, and specificity is everything
Ephron (When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle) grew up with a mother who told her "everything is copy," meaning your life, your embarrassments, your heartbreaks are raw material. The lesson underneath it is that the specific, true, slightly awkward detail is what makes writing feel human.
Generic emotion is boring. The exact, weirdly specific thing is what audiences remember. When Harry Met Sally lives on tiny observed truths about how men and women actually behave, not on grand romantic speeches. That's the Ephron move: the small real thing beats the big fake thing every time.
How to apply it: mine your own life for the specific detail nobody would invent. The oddly particular gift, the exact wrong thing someone said. Specificity reads as truth, and truth is what makes dialogue sing.
6. Quentin Tarantino: write what you love, not what you know
Tarantino has often pushed back on "write what you know," arguing instead that you should write what you love. He learned film by devouring it, working in a video store, absorbing genres until he could remix them. His scripts are conversations with the movies that made him.
The takeaway isn't "copy Tarantino." It's that your obsessions are your fuel. The genres you can't stop watching, the kind of scene that makes you lean forward, that's where your best writing comes from. Passion shows up on the page as energy, and energy is the thing no craft trick can fake.
How to apply it: write the movie you're dying to see that nobody's made yet. Your enthusiasm is a competitive advantage, because it's the one thing a more skilled but bored writer can't replicate.
7. Paul Schrader: build the character around a problem, then trap them
Schrader (Taxi Driver, First Reformed, Raging Bull) has talked at length about starting from a character with a specific spiritual or psychological problem and then designing a situation that forces that problem into the open. He works from theme and character pressure outward, squeezing the protagonist until they crack.
This is a masterclass in how to raise the stakes: you don't just add external danger, you build a situation that attacks the exact wound your character carries. The pressure is personal, which is why it's unbearable to watch and impossible to look away from.
How to apply it: define your protagonist's core flaw or need, then engineer a plot that makes that specific flaw the thing standing between them and what they want. External stakes plus internal wound equals a story that hurts in the right way.
8. Charlie Kaufman: risk the honest, uncomfortable thing
Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) is the patron saint of writers who refuse to play it safe. His recurring message is that the honest work is uncomfortable, that fear is a sign you're near something true, and that the temptation to give the audience what they expect is the thing to resist.
His scripts go to the awkward, embarrassing, genuinely felt places most writers sand down. That's not weirdness for its own sake. It's the courage to write the true thing even when the true thing is unflattering or strange.
How to apply it: when a scene feels safe, it probably is. Push it toward the thing you're slightly afraid to write. The discomfort is usually the signal that you've stopped performing and started telling the truth.
Steal the principles, not the style
Notice what these eight have in common. None of them is a formula. Every one is a principle about honesty, structure, or trusting the audience. You can't write like Sorkin or Kaufman by imitating their surface. You get there by absorbing what they understood and applying it in your own voice.
If you want to go deeper, the best screenwriting books collect a lot of this thinking in one place. But the real work is on the page tonight: one scene, one clear intention, one real obstacle, one true detail nobody would invent. When your script actually delivers on those, it's ready for the world, and finished, ready screenplays are exactly what ScriptLix exists for. The masters aren't magic. They just kept the promises the rest of us skip.
FAQ
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Or run it now without an emailQ: What did Aaron Sorkin say about writing scenes? A: Sorkin has repeatedly described drama as intention plus obstacle: a character wants something and something stands in the way. If you cannot name what a character wants in a scene and what blocks it, you likely have talking rather than an actual scene.
Q: What did William Goldman mean by nobody knows anything? A: He meant no one in Hollywood can reliably predict what will succeed. Sure things flop and passed-over scripts become classics. The lesson for writers is to stop chasing trends and instead execute the story only you can write at a professional level.
Q: What is the difference between rules and principles in screenwriting? A: Robert McKee draws this line: a rule says you must do it one way, while a principle explains why something works. Principles free you, because once you understand why a technique works you can bend it on purpose to serve your story.
Q: What is Billy Wilder's most famous screenwriting rule? A: That the audience is smart, so let them add two plus two together. Give viewers the pieces and trust them to connect the dots instead of explaining everything. He also stressed knowing your ending before writing the middle.
Q: Did Tarantino really say write what you love? A: He has often argued for writing what you love rather than only what you know. His point is that your obsessions are your fuel, and genuine passion shows up on the page as energy that a more skilled but bored writer cannot fake.
Q: How do you apply advice from famous screenwriters? A: Steal the principles, not the style. Absorb what each writer understood about honesty, structure, and trusting the audience, then apply it in your own voice. Start small: one scene, one clear intention, one real obstacle, one specific true detail.
