Creating confusion is never good, ambiguity on the other hand is a mighty weapon in your armoury. Get it right and the audience will love the journey you've created, get it wrong and your film script will be consigned to the 'no idea what that's about' pile. Some believe that a more convoluted or complex script is better than a simple one. Sure convoluted and complex can work. If complex and convoluted goes wrong however -which is easier the more complex or convoluted the st

In confidence, screenwriter to screenwriter, writing a satisfying ending for a feature screenplay is hard isn’t it? Your audience won’t know how or why -that’s your job- but they definitely know when you’ve let them down at the end of the film. A few years back I watched an indie feature written and directed by a friend -names have been removed to protect the innocent- and though in many ways it was very accomplished, throughout the film I remember repeatedly asking myself t

When I started my screenwriting adventures, if someone had said to me that I needed a 'process' I would have laughed in their face and muttered about process being anti-creative. I'd had some success early in my 'career'. Two producers had vied to option my first feature script. Since I'd written that screenplay in a very idiosyncratic way, I assumed -in my arrogance- that 1. I knew a thing or two about the craft and 2. I didn't need a process. Those views lasted precisely un