📝 Screenwriters

Ten deep-dive profiles of celebrated screenwriters, tracing each writer’s path into the industry and the craft choices behind their most acclaimed scripts.

10 profiles
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Story & Editing Craft

Charlie Kaufman: From NYU Film School to Reinventing What a Screenplay Could Be

How an American screenwriter trained at NYU's film school spent years writing for television sitcoms before Being John Malkovich announced one of the most structurally…

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Story & Editing Craft

Diablo Cody: From Blogger and Stripper Memoirist to Juno's Oscar-Winning Screenwriter

How an American writer with no formal screenwriting training, who first gained an audience blogging about a brief stint as an exotic dancer, entered a screenwriting contest almost…

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Story & Editing Craft

Emerald Fennell: From Oxford English Student to Promising Young Woman's Oscar-Winning Script

How a British writer and actress who studied English literature at Oxford and worked as a showrunner on Killing Eve wrote and directed Promising Young Woman, a formally audacious…

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Story & Editing Craft

Greta Gerwig: From Mumblecore Actress to Barbie's Box Office History

How an American actress who studied philosophy and English at Barnard College worked her way up through low-budget mumblecore independent films before co-writing Frances Ha and…

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Story & Editing Craft

Guillermo Arriaga: Building Non-Linear Structure from Journalism and Literature

How a Mexican novelist and journalist who studied communication sciences at Universidad Iberoamericana developed a signature fractured-timeline screenwriting structure with…

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Story & Editing Craft

Hanif Kureishi: From Suburban London to My Beautiful Laundrette's Landmark Screenplay

How a British-Pakistani writer who grew up in suburban Bromley and studied philosophy at King's College London wrote My Beautiful Laundrette, a landmark screenplay addressing…

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Story & Editing Craft

Jean-Claude Carrière: From Agricultural Family to Buñuel's Essential Collaborator

How a French writer who grew up in a rural winemaking family and studied literature and history in Paris became Luis Buñuel's essential late-career screenwriting…

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Story & Editing Craft

Phoebe Waller-Bridge: From Solo Fringe Theatre to Fleabag's Global Reach

How a British writer trained at RADA as an actress wrote Fleabag as a one-woman fringe theatre show at the Edinburgh Festival before adapting it into one of the most critically…

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Story & Editing Craft

Robert Towne: From USC Screenwriting Student to Chinatown's Master Screenplay

How an American screenwriter trained at USC built years of experience as an uncredited 'script doctor' for other filmmakers' troubled productions before writing…

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Story & Editing Craft

Susannah Grant: From UCLA Film School to Erin Brockovich's Oscar-Nominated True Story

How an American screenwriter trained at UCLA's film school built a career writing acclaimed adaptations of real women's stories, from Erin Brockovich to Unbelievable…

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