35 Coming-of-Age Scripts to Download and Study

5AM StoryTalk has curated a tour through growing up on-screen for you

Aug 26, 2024

∙ Paid

Our relationship with the future begins to rapidly develop as pre-teens. We’re racked by both impatience and excitement for the change it promises. But we also dread it, develop anxiety around it, doubt it and what it will mean for us. This makes sense, of course; the unknown is something we’re biologically predisposed to run away from. What I’m describing is a kind of existential tension that follows us for much of our life - the tension between what was and what will be.

If you’re a regular reader of 5AM StoryTalk, you might recall I shared a few pieces on this “tension of becoming” earlier this year. You can read them here, here, and here. The first specifically focused on coming-of-age films, which come in all shapes and sizes. Today, as one of my semi-regular educational resources for 5AM StoryTalk subscribers — in this case, though, exclusively paid subscribers — I’m sharing the screenplays for 35 such films.

I’ve tried to select a wide range of titles for this list, from The Graduate and American Graffiti, to Boyz N the Hood and The Virgin Suicides, to Ladybird and Moonlight - and many, many more. Hopefully, they help you in your exploration and study of the screenwriting craft. Maybe you’re even working on a coming-of-age story of your own.

All of these screenplays tend to vanish, as all things do on the Internet. Download ASAP for your personal study. And if you want more resources like this one, be sure to check out my other articles (most of which are not behind paywalls):

Enjoy the reads!

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ALMOST FAMOUS (2000) by Cameron Crowe

AMERICAN GRAFFITI (1973) by George Lucas, Gloria Katz, and William Huyck

AMERICAN PIE (1999) by Adam Herz

ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT’S ME, MARGARET (2023) by Kelly Fremon Craig

You can read my artist-on-artist conversation with my friend Kelly Fremon Craig here. She was my very first such conversation here at 5AM StoryTalk, in fact.

BOOKSMART (2019) by Emily Halpern, Sarah Haskins, Susanna Fogel, and Katie Silberman

You can read my artist-on-artist conversation with screenwriter Susanna Fogel here.

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