Want to Be a Better Screenwriter? Play God.

The view is great

In the early pages of my book Essentials of Screenwriting there is a chapter called Screenwriting: The God Game. I argue that to write a screenplay is to play God.

As God created the universe, each writer creates the universe of his screenplay. If he wants it to rain, it rains. If he wearies of rain and wants the sun to shine, the sun shines. If he wants to kill somebody — and who has never wanted in a dark corner of his heart to kill somebody? — he kills somebody. And if he comes later to feel badly about having killed somebody, he can bring his victim back to life.

The important point is that God does not hedge Her bets.

She does not in Genesis command: “Let there be something that sort of glows, you know, something that, like, shimmers, something that possesses properties that could be likened to a quality one might associate with lightness or brightness.

Instead, She commands, “Let there be light!”

Writers should be every bit as assertive in their scripts. Never use terms such as “sort of” or “kind of” or “approximately” or “and so on” or “etc.” To be precise in our screenplays, to be concrete, is to be godly.