The best screenplay I’ve ever read is the script for ‘Election,’ the 1999 film directed by Alexander Payne. Election is based on a novel by Tom Perrotta (who also wrote the excellent ‘Little Children’), and the screenplay was mostly written by Jim Taylor, in partnership with Payne. 

The script is a perfect guide to the resulting film, and the sequencing, the foreshadowing, the dialogue, it’s all peak. There’s nothing, in my opinion, that can be improved here, the film is the best it can be.

I’ve written a couple of screenplays, but the difficulty in getting feedback and/or traction for screen stories has generally kept me away.

After selling the film rights for my first novel, I worked with the production team on converting it to a screen story. And that was hugely educational, working with John Palermo (who later produced the film ‘Drive,’ which is based on a novel by James Sallis) and director Kris Moyes on building a vision for it.

It didn’t end up happening, for various reasons, but it did give me more insight into the process from people actually working in the film industry.

I gave it another shot a few years back, converting one of my unpublished manuscripts into a screenplay, which I then published on The Black List, a well-known promotional platform for screenwriters. And I got some good feedback on it:

But I didn’t really know what to do next. And since you have to pay to host it on the site, I eventually removed it and relegated it back to my hard drive.

But it’s something that I’d love to get into, creating screen characters and stories that resonate. And every time I see a Netflix movie that falls to bits in the third act, I’m reminded of the opportunities. If you know the right people. If you have the right contacts

Yeah, I don’t really know the screenwriting world, but I do know a few people who make a living as staff writers on TV series’. Just not in Australia. The Australian industry is pretty small, and getting an “in” is difficult. 

But back to the point, in looking to write screenplays, I’ve also read a heap of them, in order to ensure that I understand screen conversion, and how to write impactful screen direction.

And Election is the best screenplay I’ve read. It translates direct to screen so perfectly, and if you want to learn about effective screen story, it’s worth downloading a copy of the screenplay and giving it a watch.