Write On with 'Spencer' Screenwriter Steven Knight

The acclaimed British screenwriter, showrunner and producer breaks down writing the haunting Princess Diana biopic for director Pablo Larraín (Jackie): "The instruction I gave to myself is that because this is a princess and it's a castle, it's a fairy tale, and I think most fairy tales are horror stories with a happy ending… I wanted to go there to make this a fairy tale, and it does have a happy ending, but along the way, it's a princess who's held captive in a haunted castle."

 

Steven goes on to give advice about hooking the reader in the first ten pages of your screenplay: "Don't think that there is a 'right' way of doing this… The thing that writers should try to do - especially those first ten pages - is make it as unlike anything that anybody's ever seen because we all know that the people who are going to read the script have read a thousand scripts that month and have seen it all, know it all, but if something happens when they're reading it that they weren't expecting, you have attention.

 

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