Movies - TV
How Quentin Tarantino Knows When He's Come Up With A Good Story
By SHAE SENNETT
With films like “Reservoir Dogs,” “Pulp Fiction,” and “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” under his belt, it’s apparent that Quentin Tarantino is an extremely talented filmmaker, but how are his films so consistently good? In a recent interview, Tarantino shed some light on his writing process and his secrets for weeding out bad ideas.
Miraculously, Tarantino never learned how to type and still writes all of his films by hand. This process helps him weed out bad ideas because when it comes time to transfer his handwritten script to digital format, he uses only his index finger to type letter by letter. As the filmmaker described the process, “You’re thinking, ‘OK, I’m not gonna do this unless it’s good.’”
Likewise, he also isn’t afraid to let people read rough drafts, but he clarified that he’s not looking for criticism: "I don't really want a lot of comments back from them, unless they're positive." Instead, he explained "The point of reading it to them is for me to hear it through their ears […] I'm not just reading it in the room, now I'm performing.”
However, before letting others read his scenes, Tarantino reads it out loud to himself. As Tarantino explains, he gets to know his characters through their dialogue, and to get a feel for his characters, he read their lines out loud. He explained, “I’m very much a method writer. I really become the characters when I’m writing them.”