It seemed too good to be true when I first happened upon it: a database with hundreds of free Hollywood movie scripts, ready to download and dig in to for writing studies!
I had landed upon The Internet Movie Script Database (not to be confused with the International Movie Database) — an amazing resource for writing workshop. I have used its contents to teach the obvious genre (screenwriting) — but I have also used the scripts in memoir and fiction writing studies to teach about dialogue, creating character, writing concisely, show-don’t-tell and so on.
Do yourself a favor and head on over to the IMSDb before reading on. You’ll notice that you can search the database by title or genre. You can also browse the newest titles on the homepage, under Newest Releases.
Two Scripts & Some Ideas
It’s easy to get lost in a script; it does take some time to plod through hundreds of pages in search of excerpts to use with students. I often just pull the first few pages of a script to share — or if I’ve seen the movie and can identify a scene I want to look at, I’ll search within the script for phrases I remember from the movie. To get you going in your study, below are two scripts you might consider exploring with your writers and ways to use them.
Mud
Summary: Two young boys encounter a fugitive and form a pact to help him evade the vigilantes that are on his trail and to reunite him with his true love. (International Movie Database)
Click here for the full script.
Click here for the excerpt I used.
How I used it:
I used this excerpt from Mud to demonstrate one way to create character: through setting. Nancie Atwell encourages her writers to “create [their] character’s bedroom and fill it with the stuff of his or her life that reveals parts of the present or past.” In this excerpt, director Jeff Nichols demonstrates this technique using narrative description to show the abandoned boat that Mud has turned into a temporary home. The students will enjoy discussing what the contents of his boat-treehouse reveal about Mud.
A Fault in Our Stars
Summary: Two teens, both who have different cancer conditions, fall in love after meeting at a cancer support group. (The International Movie Database)
Click here for the full script.
Click here for the excerpt I used.
How I used it:
I used this short excerpt to teach students about lean writing. David Trottier, author of The Screenwriter’s Bible, advises screenwriters to keep description “on the lean side, providing only what is absolutely necessary to progress the story.”
While this advice applies more to screenwriting than it does fiction, this lesson helps students become more intentional and “choosy” with the details they include in their writing. Beginner writers usually run into one of the following problems at some point: they don’t write enough description, or they get carried away with their description. Studying this excerpt may help students think about the types of details they can include or aid them in eliminating details that don’t move their story along. With this particular excerpt, we talk about why the screenwriter may have chosen to include the title of the book Hazel is reading. We also discuss the importance of the “squeal of delight.”
Another Goldmine
Current, engaging mentor texts that reach every writer in the room are like gold, so finding multiple drafts of a current, engaging mentor text is equivalent to striking it rich. This is what happened to me when the IMSDb lead me to other screenplay resources, like Drew’s Script-O-Rama, a recent favorite of mine.
In addition to offering hundreds of scripts, it also offers (for some movies) multiple versions of the same script. For example, here is the first draft of Batman, the revised first draft, and the fifth draft. Not only is it cool to study how scripts change over time, but these drafts can be bundled together to create a cluster for a revision study.
Drew’s Script-O-Rama offers fewer classic scripts than the IMSDb but tends to have a better selection of contemporary films. Here is a list of just a few Oscar-nominated and winning films this website offers:
These mentor texts databases, coupled with our Mentor Text Dropbox that you have continued to help us build, offer so many possibilities for genre and technique studies next year. If you haven’t already, go ahead and add “explore the dropbox” to your summer to-do list. We can’t promise you won’t get lost inside, but with a glass of iced tea, and some extra time on your hands, it’s an adventure worth taking.
In your initial browsing of the IMDB, what scripts offered themselves up as mentor texts? In what ways do you envision using The IMDB or Drew’s Script-o-Rama in your workshop? Feel free to leave a comment below, or find us on Twitter @allisonmarchett @rebekahodell1.
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