Registration is Open For The 2009 Screenwriting Expo Click Here to Register Or Learn More Early registrants get first priority to buy pitch tickets

Professional Seminars on Screenwriting: Michael Hauge:  Story Structure & Character Arc July 25 Pilar Alessandra: Writing Great Scenes, July 26  Subscribe to Creative Screenwriting

Access Is The Hardest Thing To Find In Hollywood. Let Us Kick Down Doors For You With: "Send Them Your Scripts (Or Queries)"  A New PDF Directory Of 50 Producers And Agents Who Will Take Your Script Or Query Unsolicited  Click here to learn more or to order for just $19.95.

Screenwriting DVDs: Screenwriting School In A Box

Free Podcasts — Jeff Goldsmith's Interviews With
Writers And Directors At the Creative Screenwriting
Film Screening Series — Click here

Excerpts From Our Current Issue...

Away We Go
BY PETER CLINES

Once they decided to attempt a screenplay, the two set some ground rules for their main characters. "We wanted their dialogue to feel like real dialogue between couples that knew each other very well," Vendela Vida says. "We knew we also wanted them to see the world in a similar way. We just had this idea of a couple that would go through a film as a unit. As one. We thought that was very true to our experience as a couple and people we knew. You don't see that many people who are married or involved with people who are drastically different from themselves."

David Eggers points out that most couples for stage and screen are based on the idea of being opposites, and acknowledges the dramatic reason. "There's a tension there that we recognize and it makes sense," he says. "They can play off of each other. There's an inherent tension and potential for comedy or anything else." What appealed to both writers was the idea that their two leads would not be fighting or breaking up but functioning and in love throughout the story. "Could you make that work?" he recalls. "Even though it seems more difficult to have a couple as a unit? The drama has to come from elsewhere. Conflict has to come from outside of themselves. So that was our inherent thing."

Like what you just read? Read Peter Clines' entire interview with David Eggers and Vendela Vida in the latest issue of Creative Screenwriting!

The Hurt Locker
BY ADAM STOVALL

After Mark Boal and director Kathryn Bigelow agreed on which of his stories and experiences they would use, they realized additional narrative material was needed to connect all of the elements. Boal's solution was to further research bomb culture. He met with soldiers in every branch, war reporters and even FBI bomb forensics agents. Boal also interviewed foreign soldiers from Israel and Palestine with bomb experience.

Because Boal knew he was writing specifically for Bigelow, he chose to write to her strengths as a director. "She was involved in discussing it conceptually; she was there through all the drafts; she was pretty much the only person I got notes from," Boal says. "We were on the same page from the beginning about the kind of movie we wanted—one that was experiential and put the audience on the ground with the soldiers. I think that came from the embed, the way they just drop you into the situation, show you where you're going, and that's it, you're going."

Check out the rest of Adam Stovall's interview with writer Mark Boal in the latest issue of Creative Screenwriting!

Creative Screenwriting is sold by subscription and at these and other newsstands: The literary section of Barnes & Noble Bookstores. Also  B & N College Bookstores, Borders, B.Dalton, Books A Million, Virgin Megastores, Tower Records/Books, Hastings, Shinders (all over Minnesota), Joseph Beth Booksellers, and in many independent newsstands and booksellers in major cities around North America and in Europe, and at the Writers Store in West Los Angeles, CA.