Quotes from Syd Field

Action is character. What a person does is what he is, not what he says.

Confusion is the first step toward clarity

The writer's job is to write the screenplay and keep the reader turning pages, not to determine how a scene or sequence should be filmed. You don't have to tell the director and cinematographer and film editor how to do their jobs. Your job is to write the screenplay, to give them enough visual information so they can bring those words on the page into life, in full 'sound and fury,' revealing strong visual and dramatic action, with clarity, insight, and emotion.

But over the years, I've learned not to believe too much in luck or accidents; T think everything happens for a reason. There's something to be learned from every moment, every experience we encounter during the brief time we spend on this planet. Call it fate, call it destiny, call it what you will; it really doesn't matter.

During the writing process you're going to discover things about yourself you never knew. For example, if you're writing about something that happened to you, you may re-experience some old feelings and emotions. You may get 'wacky' and irritable and live each day as if you were on an emotional roller coaster. Don't worry. Just keep writing.

La cosa più difficile quando si scrive è sapere che cosa scrivere

All drama is conflict. Without conflict, you have no action; without action, you have no character; without character, you have no story; and without story, you have no screenplay.

When you're in the paradigm, you can't see the paradigm.

There is only now, today, this present moment, this point in time. Waiting for 'someday' is, like striving for perfection, really just an excuse. 'Someday' is a concept that, to quote my mentor, Jean Renoir 'exists only in the mind, not in reality.

Joseph Campbell reflects in The Power of Myth that in mythic terms, the first part of any journey of initiation must deal with the death of the old self and the resurrection of the new. Campbell says that the hero, or heroic figure, 'moves not into outer space but into inward space, to the place from which all being comes, into the consciousness that is the source of all things, the kingdom of heaven within. The images are outward, but their reflection is inward.

What's great about writing a screenplay is that the subtext of the scene, what is not said, can sometimes be more important that what is said. Again, dialogue serves two basic functions in the scene: Either it moves the story forward or it reveals information about the character.

Beginning, middle, and end; Act I, Act II, Act III. Set-Up, Confrontation, Resolution—these parts make up the whole. It is the relationship between these parts that determines the whole.

The Chinese say that the longest journey begins with the first step, and in many philosophical systems endings and beginnings are connected; as in the concept of yin and yang, two concentric circles joined together, forever united, forever opposed. If you can find a way to illustrate this in your screenplay, it is to your advantage.

Many times you may feel the urge to sit down and start writing a screenplay but you don't really know what to write about. So you go looking for a subject. Just know that when you're looking for your subject, your subject is really looking for you. You'll find it someplace, at some time, probably when you're least expecting it. It will be yours to follow through on or not, as you choose.

Hegel, the great eighteenth-century German philosopher, maintained that the essence of tragedy derives not from one character being right and the other being wrong, or from the conflict of good versus evil, but from a conflict in which both characters are right, and thus the tragedy is one of right against right, being carried to its logical conclusion.

Life consists in action,' Aristotle said, 'and its end is a mode of action, not a quality.' The same with Hamlet, or Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, or Neo in The Matrix: characters who have overcome their doubts and fears, then pushed them aside and acted. It is this action that elevates them into the realm of 'heroic figures.

Sometimes incidents and events in our lives bring out the best in us, or the worst. Sometimes we recover from these events and sometimes we don't - but they always impact us. At other times how we act and react, or deal with a particular situation, reveals our true nature and tells us who we really are.

Before you write one shot, one word of dialogue on paper, you must know four things: your ending, your beginning, Plot Point I, and Plot Point II.

Hollywood is the only place where you can die from encouragement." Dorothy Parker

The hardest thing about writing is knowing what to write.

Then I remembered something I'd read in a Kurt Vonnegut novel: when you're trying to find the answer to a question, the answer is in the question.

read the trades, call the agents, call the production companies, call the agents of the actors she thinks are right for the parts, call the people she knows in the industry; in other words, she's got to determine if there's a market for her script.

During this second act the main character encounters obstacle after obstacle that keeps him/her from achieving his/her dramatic need, which is defined as what the character wants to win, gain, get, or achieve during the course of the screenplay. If you know your character's dramatic need, you can create obstacles to it and then your story becomes your character, overcoming obstacle after obstacle to achieve his/her dramatic need.

The dramatic premise is what the screenplay is about; it provides the dramatic thrust that drives the story to its conclusion.