Over the past several months, we've shared links to several of the award-contending screenplays (only six months to go until awards season begins!). Reading an entire screenplay can certainly help when you're studying story, structure and tone. Sometimes, though, we only need a little inspiration, just a few pages of a great script to motivate us to stop procrastinating and get back to writing. Throughout 2014, the Writers Guild Foundation is giving us just that -- select pages from the WGA's list of the 101 Greatest Screenplays.
Each Tuesday and Thursday this year, the Writers Guild Foundation is pulling one of the WGA's 101 Greatest Screenplays off its library shelves and posting a few pages. Now, if you live in Los Angeles or you happen to be in LA with a few hours to spare, you can visit the Writers Guild Foundation library and read these screenplays for yourself. For the rest of us, we'll have to make do with the few pages posted to the Writers Guild Foundation blog twice a week.
The Foundation started with #101 (Notorious) and is counting down to number one (Casablanca). In a recent post, the Foundation highlighted two pages from the screenplay for The Verdict (screenplay by David Mamet, based on the novel by Barry Reed). What I find so valuable in this excerpt is how quickly Mamet establishes his characters and their situations with a rich scene in only two pages. Two pages!
Now, are you ready to get back to your writing? Do these pages inspire your own screenwriting? Share your thoughts with us in the comments.
Link: Screenplay 101 -- The Writers Guild Foundation
