well here are a couple tips.

if you want to build your dialouge up. Like learn to write better dialouge, make your charecters stand out more, etc. Take a movie you love, or a great movie. Godfather, Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction, etc.

Now instead of watching the film, cover your tv. Cover it so you cant see any picture. And just listen to the characters speaks. It focuses your ears a lot more, building up your knowlage of dialouge with is extremely important in writing scripts.

another tip is that once your done writing you script. Take a segment from you script and white out your characters names. Read the dialouge. As you read, you should be able to know which character is which by the way they talk, if you are confused, then go back and make your characters more alive.

i have some tips on directing too if you wanna build up you camera shots and how to learn different camera shots/angles.

Fantastic Firsts, Sloppy Seconds, Tickilish Thirds, Filthy Fourths, Fouling Fifths, Slippity Slappy Sixths, and the Seventh person scrapes her off the mattrass

Agreed. The dialogue is important. The way I go about it is just talking to people. Notice the way you talk to your peers, what kind of slang you use, movie references etc. Even writing quirks into your characters can affect how they do things.

For example. In a movie I wrote and am filming this summer, the main character has this taste for cherry cola in the sense that every time you see him in a gas station he's drinking that specific pop. I just based that off of my severe addiction to Cherry Coke during my job at a gas station.

But be careful not to put too much of yourself into every character or you will have a movie full of you's running around.

simple answer to how to get better:

practice practice practice -- and then try again.

writing is like any other art... keep doing it, if something comes out not like you hope, do it again. you're the only one who can make you a better writter. write it read it and play it in your head, if they don't match, make it match.

Read, read, read. Pay attention to how a story's told -- what details are highlighted, what information is left out. And listen -- to friends, children, strangers on the subway.

Hey Sloppy Seconds! Post us some of those cool directing tips!

Future Director,
Tyler Ives

Also make sure each scene has 2 converging ideas. One thing pushing against another. This could be a character distracted with something while talking, someone else interrupting, a nearby annoyance such as a neighbor hammering - anything that raises the dramatic tension. It doesn't have to be conflict between the characters.

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simple answer to how to get better:

practice practice practice -- and then try again.

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Wow. My mind is set adrift with ideas now. Is it wrong to write the story in story format? I have no clue how to write a script, and I imagine great conflict in trying to use "stage" directions to dictate texture and mood. Like I'm working on a 15 minute short film, mainly cuz alot of sites i've seen reccomend starting with a 15 to get the idea of how much work is really involved. I'm writing/directing/casting for a short story/film I'm doing tentively titled Daddy Dearest. I can't take total credit on the concept. My buddy and I are partners. But anyway Daddy Dearest is about a loving father who snaps and butchers his family. His wife and 6 kids, not to mention the cocksucker mailman, and i'll probably be in a scene just for the hell of it. I'm morbidly obese, and I want to see what i'd look like on film all gutted. lol. But yeah. I'm gonna try to make it tasteful, though extremely bloody, and with an actual story line.

is there a site i can go to or something to learn how to script?