Joss Whedon’s top 10 Writing tips

In my new life as College Student Extraordinaire (CSE for short), one of my courses is Intro to Screenwriting. I’ve been interested in taking such a course for many years, so I was very happy to get into the class without a problem. I was disappointed in the class until recently, for various reasons, but I’m now very pleased and suddenly quite motivated. Consequently, I’ve been perusing various sites and forums online looking for advice on how to write well for the screen. Suffice to say, I’ve found a lot of good advice, but none I’ve taken to heart so readily as this nugget of platinum from one of my favorite screenwriters, Joss Whedon (gold is too cheap and commonplace for Mr. Whedon’s level of talent, imho).

The article was orginally presented in 4Talent magazine but was reprinted with permission at the source linked above. Since I don’t have such permission, I’ll just post the summary here and let you visit the source article yourself for the meat. While his advice is somewhat specific to screenwriting, I believe his advice can, by and large, apply equally well to all forms of fiction writing. So, from the top, here we are:

Joss Whedon’s 10 Tips for Writers

1. Finish it!
2. Structure
3. Have something to say!
4. Everybody has a reason to live
5. Cut what you love
6. Listen
7. Track the audience mood
8. Write like a movie
9. Don’t listen
10. Don’t sell out!

Yeah, that’s a list alright. Head to the link for the meat!