Le linee guida di Emma Coats per i tuoi film prefe (fonte: Industrial Scripts.com):

• You Admire a Character More For Trying Than For Their Successes
• You’ve Got to Keep in Mind What’s Interesting to You as an Audience. Not What’s Fun to Do as a Writer. The Two Can Be Very Different!
• Trying For Theme is Important, However You Won’t See What the Story is About Until You’re At the End of the Story. Got it? Now Rewrite
• Once Upon a Time There Was______. Every day ___. One day________. Because of that,______. Because of That,_______. Until Finally______.
• Simplify. Focus. Hop Over Detours. You’ll Feel Like You’re Losing Valuable Stuff But it Sets You Free.
• What’s Your Character Good At/Most Comfortable With? Throw the Polar Opposite at Them. Challenge Them. How Do They Deal?
• Come Up With Your Ending Before You Figure Out Your Middle. Seriously, Endings Are Hard. Get Yours Working up Front.
• Finish Your Story. Let Go if It Isn’t Perfect. In An Ideal World You Have Both, But Move On. Do Better Next Time.
• When You’re Stuck, Make a List of What Would and Wouldn’t Happen Next. Material to Get You Unstuck Will Show Up.
• Pull Apart the Stories You Like. What You Like in Them is a Part of You; You’ve Got to Recognize it Before You Can Use it.
• Putting it On Paper Lets You Start Fixing it. If it Stays in Your Head, a Perfect Idea, You’ll Never Share it With Anyone.
• Discount the First Idea That Comes to Mind. And the 2nd, and the 3rd and 4th and 5th. Get the Obvious Ones Out of the Way. Surprise Yourself.
• Give Your Characters Opinions. Passive/Malleable Might Seem Likeable as you Write, but It’s Poison to the Audience.
• Why Must You Tell THIS story? What’s the Belief Burning Within You That This Story Feeds Off Of? That’s the Heart of It.
• If You Were Your Character in this Situation, How Would You Feel? Honesty Lends Credibility to Unbelievable Situations.
• What are the Stakes? Give us a Reason to Root for the Character. What Happens if They Don’t Succeed? Stack the Odds Against.
• No Work is Ever Wasted. If it Doesn’t Work, Let Go and Move On. It’ll Come Back Around and Be Useful Later.
• You Have to Know Yourself: the Difference Between Being Yourself and Fussing. Story is Testing, Not Refining.
• Coincidences to Get Characters into Trouble are Great, Coincidences to Get Them Out of it Are Cheating.
• Exercise: Take the Building Blocks Out of a Movie You Dislike. How’d You Arrange Them into What You DO Like?
• You Gotta Identify With Your Characters/Situations. You Can’t just Write “Cool”. What Would Make YOU Act That Way?
• What’s the Essence of Your Story? The Most Economical Telling of It? If You Know That, You Can Build Out From There.