20 Screenwriting Tips from Paul Thomas Anderson on how he wrote Licorice Pizza & There Will Be Blood

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Paul Thomas Anderson is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He developed an interest in filmmaking from a young age. He made his feature-film debut with Hard Eight (1996). He found critical and commercial success with Boogie Nights (1997), set in the Golden Age of Porn, and received further accolades with Magnolia (1999), an ensemble piece set in the San Fernando Valley, and Punch-Drunk Love (2002), a romantic comedy-drama film.
Anderson's fifth film, There Will Be Blood (2007), about an oil prospector during the Southern California oil boom, achieved major critical and commercial success, and is often cited as one of the greatest films of the 2000s. This was followed by The Master (2012) and Inherent Vice (2014). Anderson's eighth film, Phantom Thread, was released in 2017. His ninth film, Licorice Pizza, was released in 2021.
Allow your story to naturally emerge rather than making sure you know the theme or the meaning of your film straight from the start.
It’s fun to have an ego when you’re writing by yourself, so it might seem terrifying to become selfless and share your script with your collaborators but that’s when it starts becoming good.
If there’s a problem with something in your film, it usually means you need to track it all the way back to writing.
Create without fear.
Spectacular ideas come from the mundane situations of life. Explore the core elements of our everyday lives, relationships and then use your writing to find a deeper truth about what it means.
Writing can happen really fast if you’ve done your research about the setting, time and the characters.
Your job as a director is being an audience member and a collaborator.
Writing makes or breaks a film. Good writing makes directing and making a film easier, and poor writing makes it harder.
No matter how unique your idea, there is probably something with a resemblance out there. Watch it, study it. See where you can take ideas and critique and avoid mistakes.
Don’t be too descriptive, show your character’s motivations through their actions and their dialogue.
Think about the songs you feel match your story, and why. What about the themes of the song, the style, tells your story. This means your music, and your writing will be more unified and natural overall.
Film school can provide you with a great leg up, but ensure you learn from watching, and creating films first and foremost.
When on set, take the work seriously, but don't take yourself seriously. Make sure you’ve already had all the key conversations and meetings before shooting takes place.
Leap from project to project. Harness your excitement from each project to motivate yourself to do the next. Never allow your filmmaking to simply end.
As a writing exercise, write someone else’s words down to get inspired and work your own script from there.
Never just stare at the blank piece of paper. Build a momentum where you can write every day without it ever tiring you out, even if you only have vague ideas about what to write about.
Don’t start with a theme. Start with characters.
Constantly practise writing. If you don’t know where to start, use stories or ideas you’ve written down when you were younger.
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