There is a romantic version of screenwriting that refuses to die. A writer sits alone, waits for inspiration to arrive, and suddenly brilliant pages pour effortlessly from somewhere beyond the conscious mind. It’s a wonderful image. It’s also very different from the practical reality described by Ron Peters, a screenwriter, story analyst, and editor whose experiences include working on projects such as Defiance, The Wolf of Wall Street, Fury, and Twin Peaks. For Ron, becoming a better writer isn’t primarily about waiting for inspiration. It’s about sitting down, putting in the hours, and doing the work whether you feel inspired or not.
Ron started creating stories remarkably young. His mother would bring home beautiful hardbound journals, which he happily filled with drawings and stories without realizing how expensive they were. Later, using a digital camera capable of recording only fifteen seconds of video at a time, he and his brother started making tiny home movies. By high school, Ron was writing and directing larger projects, finding investors, and even convincing his school to allow him time away from classes to make a movie. His second film eventually attracted the attention of director Ed Zwick, whose support helped open the door for Ron to work on Defiance. From those early experiments, filmmaking became less of a distant dream and more of a craft he could build through experience.
When Ron approaches a screenplay, however, he doesn’t immediately attack it with structural theories and a red pen. His first goal is surprisingly simple: experience the movie. He reads from the first page to the last and asks whether he would actually enjoy watching this film in a theater. Only afterward does he begin breaking down the structure and examining the characters. Interestingly, although character comes second in that analytical process, Ron believes character may ultimately be more important. A screenplay can have excellent structure, but if audiences don’t care about the people inhabiting that structure, the result can still feel empty. Structure might hold the building together, but character gives us a reason to walk inside.
That becomes especially important when writing antagonists. Ron argues that writers need to enter the perspective of every character, even characters they dislike. A villain rarely experiences himself as the villain. He has motivations, desires, fears, and justifications that make sense within his own worldview. The stronger that opposition becomes, the more it can reveal about the protagonist. As Ron explains, the protagonist is only as strong as the forces pushing back against them. Without meaningful resistance, there is little opportunity for the hero to reveal who they truly are.
The Wolf of Wall Street offered an even more interesting variation because the antagonist didn’t necessarily have to be another person. While the FBI provides an external threat, Jordan Belfort’s greed and self-obsession become powerful sources of conflict themselves. The very qualities that propel Jordan toward greater wealth also begin destroying the other parts of his life. His desire creates both momentum and destruction. Ron explains that the screenplay was structurally influenced by Goodfellas, following one man through an increasingly outrageous journey while constantly asking where his choices will ultimately take him. The screenplay also continued evolving during production as the actors improvised. Ron remembers an early cut running around six and a half hours, with an enormous amount of material generated through experimentation on set. It is a reminder that even on a major production, the screenplay can remain alive.
Working on Fury presented Ron with a different experience because David Ayer was both the writer and director. The visual intention of the movie was already embedded in the screenplay because the person writing the scenes was also imagining exactly how they would eventually be photographed. Yet beneath the tanks, bullets, mud, and battle sequences, Ron describes Fury fundamentally as a character piece. The story follows very different men going through the same horrific circumstances and explores how those experiences affect each of them differently. Spectacle may bring an audience into a movie, but character is often what makes them stay.
Perhaps Ron’s most valuable advice, however, has nothing to do with famous movies or Hollywood productions. It is much simpler: write every day. He rejects the idea that writers should depend on feeling inspired before beginning. The work itself creates the writer. Some days will produce strong pages. Other days will produce material that eventually disappears into the trash. Ron believes writers have to accept that reality instead of fearing it. As he puts it, “Writing is rewriting.” The first version isn’t sacred. It is simply the material from which the better version can eventually emerge.
For beginning screenwriters, Ron also offers a pragmatic perspective on structure. Early writing samples can benefit from demonstrating that the writer understands conventional storytelling. Those first screenplays might not become the films that define your career. Instead, they may show managers, agents, producers, and other industry professionals that you understand how to construct a story. Once you understand those foundations, you have greater freedom to bend or break them. But there is another side to that advice: writers also need to trust themselves. Every person possesses a unique combination of experiences, observations, failures, relationships, and reactions that nobody else has lived in precisely the same way. That individuality isn’t something to erase in pursuit of a formula. It’s one of the most valuable things a writer has.
For filmmakers, that may be the most important lesson of all. You can study structure until you know every beat, analyze great movies frame by frame, read hundreds of screenplays, and learn every filmmaking rule ever written—but eventually you have to stop preparing and start creating. Write the screenplay. Shoot the short. Make the feature with the resources you have. Put your work into festivals, send it to representatives, pursue every legitimate avenue available to you, and create opportunities instead of waiting for someone in the industry to hand you one. Ron’s journey is a reminder that filmmaking careers are rarely built through a single lucky break. They are built through repetition, discipline, relationships, mistakes, rewrites, and an almost unreasonable willingness to keep going. Your first script may not sell. Your first movie may not get distribution. The project you believe will change everything may disappear without a trace. But every page you write and every film you make gives you something the filmmaker who is still waiting for permission doesn’t have: experience. Learn the rules, develop your voice, trust your instincts, and then get back to work. Because ultimately, the only way to become a filmmaker is to keep making films.
