150 Screenwriting Challenges

Writer/director Eric Heisserer has collected 150 specific exercises to help screenwriters develop and hone their skills in dialogue, character, story, idea generation, and rewriting.

Hi. I'm Eric, and I'm a working screenwriter, which is a dressed-up way of saying it's how I pay the rent. I started writing for the chance at paying the rent with it about fifteen years ago (oh god, that's a long time, I was such a derp), and during that long, slow crawl uphill to professional status I learned a ton of tricks and tests to help me improve my craft, including ways to find my own unique voice, and methods to break through writer's block.

A few years ago I began sharing these writing challenges on Twitter (@HIGHzurrer) and gained a healthy number of followers who were just here for the "writing insight porn" if you know what I mean. This book contains my favorite challenges from that collection, plus a few dozen new ones I've learned since then.

To be honest, the book is going to be as much a reference document for myself as I hope it will be for you, so here it is. We're in this together.

- Eric