What makes a good screenplay?
A lot of books have been written by a lot of very good writers and producers trying to define exactly the formula for a good screenplay. Workshops and university writing programs around the world endeavor to teach their screenwriting students the secret that will make their every screenplay not only a “masterpiece” but a screenplay that a producer will be willing to buy. The truth: a good screenplay is always in the eyes of the beholder. A screenplay that 20 producers reject may be joyfully scooped up by producer number 21 and turned into a successful movie, and the industry is drowning in stories just like that. One of the most famous examples is Star Wars, and George Lucas’s travails being rejected repeatedly by every studio in town (before Fox finally agreed to produce it for a very low budget) offers producers everywhere a lesson in humility. In hindsight, we all agree that the script for Star Wars was destined to serve as the basis for an astonishingly successful movie. But we’re
