3 Screenwriting Lessons Buried ‘Inside No9’ For Killer Twists

1. A GOOD ENDING MUST BE SEEDED (from Sardines)

Mark: "Why didn’t you just do the lie about the babysitter getting ill?"

Elizabeth: “Because that needs to be seeded. You need to seed it.”

5 Ego Defence Mechanisms Screenwriters Can Use To Create 3-Dimensional Characters (according to John Yorke & Sigmund Freud)

-Intellectualisation (Manhattan)
-Repression (Remains of the Day)
-Regression (The Big Chill)
-Sublimation (Chocolat)
-Rationalisation (Leaving Las Vegas)

Few things will encourage writers as much as Charles Dickens’ notes for Hard Times.

Notice -

1. Brainstorming titles (including some real stinkers like ‘Prove it!’)
2. Working out the total notebook pages required for each serial publication
3. Story beats (chapters 3-8)
4. Shortlisting scenes

7 Resources That Made Me A Better Screenwriter In 2024

-‘Inside No9’ Collected Scripts
-‘Not Pauline Kale’s Letterboxd Account
-Video Archives Podcast (w. Quentin Tarantino & Roger Avary)
-English One-Act Plays Of Today
-BBC Screenshot Podcast
-Scriptnotes Podcast
-Alan Moore’s BBC Maestro Course

What does it mean to be ‘Lynchian’?

The answer, according to David Foster Wallace…

“Lynchian refers to a particular kind of irony where the very macabre and the very mundane combine in such a way as to reveal the former's perpetual containment within the latter."

For example...

6 ‘Uncanny’ Situations To Make Your Horror Screenplays Scarier (according to Freud)

DOLLS
-dead of night

DOPPELGANGERS
-vertigo

ARRIVING WHERE YOU STARTED
-the blair witch project

REPEATEDLY SEEING THE SAME THING
-jacob’s ladder

BEING BURIED ALIVE
-kill bill: vol2

LOSING YOUR EYES
-hostel