Screenwriting Tips from Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost

At Indee, amongst our favorite film teams are the guys behind the Cornetto films: Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and The World’s End. These films display a tightness of dialogue, incredibly efficient editing and a plot structure that is rare in movies of the genre.

Below is a video where the three of them discuss their important tips in writing:

Some of the tenets that stood out for us:

Be meticulous in your writing. As great a film as I am watching, if I can poke plot holes in the story, it cheapens the entire experience for me. There’s a certain reverence that we tend to hold filmmakers up to and a script that hasn’t thought through the details is the surest way of breaking that pedestal.

Kill your babies. Ah just watch the video, Nick Frost does a fine job of explaining the importance of editing yourself in there.

Plot it all out. Edgar Wright speaks about how everything is plotted out, and for them the last scene of Shaun of the Dead was something they already had in mind and had to write a story to make that last scene plausible.

Of course there are different styles of writing but at some point in your exercise, you want to take the methodical approach and plot the whole damn story out.