Top 10 Best Screenwriters of All Time

The tricky bit with screenwriting is that writers are rarely public-facing figures, so it’s sometimes tricky to figure out who exactly is in that hall of fame. Today, I will highlight ten of the best screenwriters who’ve ever lived. Some of these folks are directors too, but we’re exclusively thinking about their screenwriting today. Top 10 best screenwriters. Walter Hill Though he went uncredited for his extensive writing work on Alien, Hill’s script has gone down as a bit of a folk legend among screenwriters. The script is supremely influential to this day because of its intensely anemic and impressionistic style, forgoing any semblance of purple prose and keeping most action lines to a single sentence or line. Alien shows a true mastery of the craft, but his scripts for The Driver, The Warriors, and Southern Comfort show how a stripped-back writing style can wring the most out of simple but bountiful premises