Writing in the Style of William Goldman

The Principle

William Goldman was the most commercially successful serious screenwriter in Hollywood history — or the most artistically serious commercial screenwriter, depending on which side of the aisle you approached him from. He won two Oscars, wrote a shelf of best-selling novels, and produced the single most quoted line about the movie business: "Nobody knows anything." He meant that no one can predict what will succeed, but the irony is that Goldman himself seemed to know a great deal — about structure, about audience, about the alchemy of making people care about what happens next.

His genius was for the accessible profound. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) is a revisionist Western that feels like a buddy comedy. All the President's Men (1976) turns investigative journalism into a thriller as tense as any spy film. The Princess Bride (1987) is a fairy tale, a satire of fairy tales, and a love story that believes in fairy tales, all simultaneously. Goldman understood that the highest compliment you can pay an audience is to entertain them so thoroughly that they don't notice how smart the material is.

He was also a supreme craftsman of adaptation. Goldman could take a 500-page novel or a complex true story and find its dramatic spine — the scenes that matter, the characters who carry the theme, the moments that cinema does better than prose. His adaptation of All the President's Men remains a masterclass in how to dramatize process without sacrificing tension.

Screenplay Architecture and Structure

Goldman's structural philosophy is summed up in his own maxim: "Screenplays are structure." He believed that the architecture of a screenplay — where scenes are placed, how information is revealed, what is withheld — is the writer's primary creative act. Everything else is decoration if the structure doesn't work; everything else sings if it does.

His structures are clean and classical but never mechanical. He uses three acts because three acts work, but within that framework he innovates constantly. The Princess Bride nests a story within a story within a story. All the President's Men builds tension through the accumulation of small investigative victories rather than through traditional dramatic escalation. Butch Cassidy disrupts its own Western structure with a lyrical South American interlude that redefines the film's emotional register.

Goldman understood suspense as information management. He controlled what the audience knows and when they know it with the precision of a card magician. In Marathon Man (1976), the dental torture scene works because Goldman has established just enough context for the audience to understand the danger while withholding enough to make the situation unpredictable.

Dialogue

Goldman's dialogue is witty without being showy. His characters are articulate but not literary — they speak in clean, direct sentences that happen to be funnier, sharper, and more memorable than real speech. "Is it safe?" "As you wish." "Follow the money." Goldman's best lines work because they are simple, rhythmic, and loaded with context.

He writes banter that reveals relationship dynamics. Butch and Sundance's exchanges establish their partnership — one plans, one acts; one talks, one shoots — without ever explicitly stating it. The Princess Bride's dialogue works on two levels simultaneously: as genuine romance and as affectionate parody of romance.

Goldman is masterful at writing scenes where characters withhold information. His interrogation scenes, negotiation scenes, and confrontation scenes derive their tension from the gap between what characters know and what they say. The dialogue becomes a chess game where every line is a calculated move.

Themes

The buddy relationship as the deepest form of love. Storytelling itself — the act of narration, the power of myth, the unreliability of the narrator. The ordinary person caught in extraordinary circumstances. The seductive danger of competence. Journalism and investigation as heroic acts. The end of an era — Goldman's best characters are often people whose world is disappearing. The tension between idealism and pragmatism. Entertainment as a moral obligation.

Writing Specifications

1. Structure screenplays with architectural precision — place scenes, reveals, and turning points with the deliberate craft of a structural engineer, ensuring every element bears narrative weight.
2. Write dialogue that is witty, clean, and direct — lines should be quotable not because they are clever but because they crystallize character and situation in the fewest possible words.
3. Manage information as a suspense tool — control what the audience knows and when they know it, creating tension through strategic withholding and revelation.
4. Create buddy relationships where the dynamic between two characters is the engine of the narrative — contrasting temperaments, complementary skills, and genuine affection expressed through antagonism.
5. Deploy unreliable narration and frame stories as entertainment devices — nested narratives should add pleasure and complexity rather than obscuring the story's emotional core.
6. Write adaptation with surgical intelligence — when working from source material, identify the dramatic spine and cut everything that doesn't serve it, regardless of how beloved the material is.
7. Build set-piece scenes that combine physical tension with verbal wit — action sequences should feature dialogue that is as sharp as the physical stakes are high.
8. Create protagonists who are competent and self-aware — characters who understand their situations, make intelligent choices, and earn the audience's respect through capability rather than through sympathy alone.
9. Write endings that honor the genre while complicating it — the conclusion should satisfy the audience's narrative expectations while introducing an element of ambiguity, loss, or irony.
10. Maintain a storytelling voice that is warm, confident, and self-aware — the screenplay should feel told by someone who loves the act of telling, who respects the audience, and who understands that entertainment is the first obligation of narrative art.