Resource: Hundreds of Screenplays All in One Place
The best way to become a great screenwriter is to read produced scripts, so here's a collection of personally curated script collections to download and study!
Every six to eight weeks for the past couple of years, I’ve shared a personally curated screenplay collection for you to download and study. Today, I’m sharing all of them with you in one place!
Hopefully the specificity of my curation has helped you pinpoint the right kind of titles to learn from and inspire you as you work on your next own projects. But I also want to make sure you understand that the demarcation lines between “types” of films and TV series is blurry on the best of days. I’d recommend you try to understand the basic storytelling mechanics of romances, comedies, science-fiction adventures, action films, TV pilots, etcetera — even across geographic distances, when possible. You never know when the tools you learn studying American horror will help you land a better joke in your British drama…seriously.
It’s important to state again here, as I do as often as I can here at 5AM StoryTalk, that you cannot become a good screenwriter if you do not read a lot of screenplays. It’s really that simple. Now, get to work - enjoy!
Thank you!! I’d like to take this opportunity to mention that at UCLA, at least when I was there, we were taught not to include the characters’ feelings in description. But if you take a look at the last page of the Breaking Bad pilot, you’ll find that Gilligan goes into delightful detail about how Walt is feeling. So…there you go. School can only help you so much. Read!!
I just started reading your Substack posts and already have ordered Psalms for the end of the World. Just wanted to let you know. 📖