TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

How Quentin Tarantino writes movies:

I have a writer’s journey going on and a filmmaker’s journey going on, and obviously they’re symbiotic, but they also are separate. When I write my scripts it’s not really about the movie per se, it is about the page. It’s supposed to be literature. I write stuff that’s never going to make it in the movie and stuff that I know wouldn’t even be right for the movie, but I’ll put it in the screenplay. We’ll decide later do we shoot it, do we not shoot it, whatever, but it’s important for the written work.

When I finish the script I want the script to be so good that I’m tempted to stop, I’m tempted not to make the movie, because if I just stop right now, I’m the winner. Now I do make them, but I want the screenplay to be that much of a document. I rarely look at the script after that other than to just go over the dialogue.

That explains why his dialogue is so incredibly tight and lyrical. I wonder if there’s something people in other creative fields can take from this sort of process. Tarantino says he effectively writes his screenplays as novels first, which helps result in beautiful stories and dialogue that may not have happened if he wrote for the screen first. He’s writing for a different medium, one that’s heavily driven by well-sculpted writing and plot, and then turns it into a film. This is a mild reversal of the adage that you should design for the medium you’re working with, but you could think of it as a way of capitalizing on the unique advantages of written word for the benefit of film.