Highland
Highland Pro’s /lookup provides short, inline answers. Building it required early design decisions.
Meet your new favorite writing app. Today we're launching Highland Pro, a groundbreaking writing tool designed to empower screenwriters, novelists, and creators of all kinds. Highland Pro offers a clean, distraction-free platform tailored to unlock creativity and enhance productivity. John talks you through many of the new features
Robert Eggers shouldn’t do interviews. Don’t get me wrong, he was a delightful and generous guest. But after a decade of putting out exquisitely-crafted and painstakingly-researched films, I started to create this image in my mind of a tortured intellectual who speaks with a deep brogue, writes with
Last week on Scriptnotes, John welcomed writer, director and actor Jesse Eisenberg for an in-depth discussion on loss, finding your voice as a writer and how to get your movie made. Jesse Eisenberg was a dream guest. Not just because I’ve been a fan of his work for a
In 2009, John answered a question about how to choose between the different stories competing for your attention, and gave an example of one time he didn’t need to choose just one. I know you have addressed this type of question to a certain extent, but I was left
This week’s rebroadcast comes from 2007 with 3 tips on how to quickly define a character’s personality in your screenplay. Just how early can you tell a script isn’t going to work? To me, it’s as the first few characters are introduced. If character introductions are
This week’s rebroadcast collects posts from 2006 and 2012 to consider how selling a script isn’t a guarantee, and why writing a film that never gets made is still work worthy of compensation. You’ve said that “most scripts don’t become movies, and a hundred things could
This week’s rebroadcast includes a post from 2007 and a downloadable PDF version of the key points (suitable for hanging up where you write). Spend a few years as a screenwriter, and writing a scene becomes an almost unconscious process. It’s like driving a car. Most of us
This week’s rebroadcast brings together a few posts about structure, and reasons to consider that there’s not only one way to plan out a story. How do you know when the story has good bones? I’m a 28-year old writer with a very old problem. I do
Useful Things for Writers
If spoilers make you want to nope on out of here… That’s fine. You should see Nope before you read this. “Right here, you are going to witness an absolute spectacle.” The engine driving Jordan Peele's Nope is powered by people trying to exploit an unexplained organism
This week’s rebroadcast comes from 2010, with thoughts on how to make sure a story with a low-budget doesn’t also wind up with low energy. One of my frustrations with independent film — and in particular, micro-indies of the past few years — is a lack of narrative ambition. Flip
When helping to build Mad Max: Fury Road‘s character arcs for Max and Furiosa, screenwriter Nico Lathouris saw how three chases could bind the characters together: “The first chase brings the Road Warrior [Max] and the Praetorian [Furiosa] together, the second chase manacles them together in mutual obligation, and
Weekend Read, our app for reading scripts on your phone, features a new curated collection of screenplays each week. This week, we look at how stories of the incarcerated allow characters from all walks of life to interact, and how prisons as a location are able to accommodate many different
This post contains spoilers. Don’t let that scare you off. You’ve likely seen all these movies, but even if you haven’t, knowing how a movie ends shouldn’t detract from the pleasure of watching a movie. Think about it: how many people skip out on Star Wars
Weekend Read, our app for reading scripts on your phone, features a new curated collection of screenplays each week. This week, we say goodbye to 2024 with some favorite features that perfectly capture those last few days of the year. You survived ‘til '25 – congratulations! Our collection includes: * Fruitvale
Weekend Read, our app for reading scripts on your phone, features a new curated collection of screenplays each week. This week, we look at how fantasy epics use their wizards, world building and wonder to create their own kind of magic. Our collection includes: * Game of Thrones - “Pilot” by
The Simpsons episode “Marge vs. the Monorail” doesn’t feature any flesh-eating ghouls. But it does offer examples for writing zombies of another kind: people stuck in a mob mentality. When local billionaire C. Montgomery Burns pays a $3 million fine for burying nuclear waste around Springfield, a town meeting
Unlike most screenwriting apps, Highland isn't named after a term from a screenwriting glossary.
In the film Galaxy Quest, Jason Nesmith and the rest of the cast of the Star Trek-like series Galaxy Quest are forced to travel into space for real. An alien race called the Thermians mistake broadcasts of the show for “historical documents” about the crew of the NSEA Protector. So
The Brothers Bloom tells a story of two sibling con artists. When Bloom (played by Adrien Brody) tries to quit the life, Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) offers him an out after one last job. The mark: A wealthy shut-in named Penelope (Rachel Weisz), whose longing for adventure pulls her into the
