The Art of Screenwriting: Karen Croner

It’s easy to get sidetracked by screenwriting books, overanalyzing the rules, overthinking every scene, and end up paralyzed when you actually sit down to write. It’s best to analyze the greats in the field more than anything, and Karen Croner’s work demonstrates the skill and subtlety it takes to craft stories that connect deeply with audiences, regardless of genre or era.

Croner has proven herself a versatile and thoughtful screenwriter throughout her career, including film and television, comedy and drama, and original scripts and adaptations. Known for One True Thing (1998) and Admission (2013), Croner is a personal favorite of mine and someone I’d argue deserves more recognition. While there’s plenty to analyze from Croner, let’s dive into what makes her writing so compelling and perfect to study.

Photo license: Dave Allocca/Starpix

The Narrative as Emotional Architecture

Croner’s screenwriting is primarily known for her focus on character-driven storytelling. Rather than relying on plot-heavy contrivances, Croner structures her narratives as emotional journeys.

In One True Thing, the story revolves around a successful young journalist who returns home to care for her terminally ill mother. What could have easily become a melodramatic morality tale is a tender and honest examination of familial expectations, maternal strength, and the ways in which people both misunderstand and profoundly love each other.

Adapting the Inner World

Adaptations are difficult. Adapting a book into a film presents a unique set of challenges, largely due to the fundamental differences between the two mediums. Novels naturally lend themselves to introspection since they explore internal thoughts, emotional nuance, and psychological depth. Much of a book’s power lies in its ability to dwell within a character’s inner world.

Film, on the other hand, is a visual medium. It relies on what can be seen, heard, and shown rather than told. Conveying a character’s internal struggles on screen without resorting to clunky exposition or voiceover can be a delicate balancing act.

There’s also the issue of scope. Books often contain far more content than can realistically fit into a standard two-hour film. Given the common rule that one script page equals one minute of screen time, much of a novel’s material must be trimmed, condensed, or reimagined to suit the cinematic form.

Croner excels in this area, skillfully preserving a work's emotional and thematic depth while reshaping it for the screen.

In One True Thing, for instance, she transformed a novel filled with internal reflection into a script with everything you’d want in a story. Instead of relying on voiceover, she created scenes that allow the actors’ performances to express the story’s emotional undercurrents.

The film contains moments of silence and subtext, where the truth of a relationship or the burden of a realization is expressed with a glance, a hesitation, or a carefully chosen phrase. The screenplay gives space for the audience to observe, infer, and feel, an approach that respects both the viewer's intelligence and the emotional sophistication of the source material.

Croner’s work in developing the voices of her characters at the center of the story, rendering them specific, flawed, and alive, was a vital part of the success of her various scripts.

Writing Women with Honesty

In Hollywood, non-male characters have long been underwritten, typically reduced to archetypes, love interests, or background figures in male-driven narratives.

Croner’s characters are not defined by their relationships to men but by their own internal drives, contradictions, and transformations. In this way, her writing contributes to the larger project of gender equity in storytelling.

Take Admission, a film that blends comedy with emotional poignancy. Tina Fey plays Portia Nathan, a Princeton admissions officer whose tightly controlled life begins to unravel. Croner balances humor with genuine emotional stakes, allowing Portia to be brilliant, self-doubting, nurturing, flawed, and funny. This layered portrayal resists the clichés of both the rom-com heroine and the career woman, offering instead a portrait of a person reckoning with change and possibility.

Croner has spoken openly about her desire to write multidimensional women. She does not shy away from their vulnerabilities or mistakes but treats these elements as central to their humanity. In doing so, she broadens the scope of female representation in film, insisting on complexity, empathy, and truth.

Collaboration and the Rewrite

Screenwriting in Hollywood is rarely a solitary art. Most screenplays pass through many hands, and Croner has been called upon often as a “script doctor” or rewriter, sometimes without credit.

Writers approach rewriting in various ways. Some race through a first draft, focusing on getting words down without overthinking, and only dive into the real work of revision afterward. Others rely on meticulous planning, outlining every plot point and developing detailed character profiles before they begin.

I like more fluid processes. I’d argue it’s best to write in bursts, moving a few pages ahead, then circling back, revising as you go. It’s best to shape and refine the material in real time, constantly checking in with my instincts to make sure the story feels true and on track. By reaching the final page of a full draft, you’ve already rewritten much of it several times. But that’s only the beginning, since you can revisit the entire manuscript. And again.

Nevertheless, Croner has also worked extensively in television, including the Hulu miniseries The Last Tycoon, based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s unfinished novel. These works demonstrate her ability to flesh out adaptations and character complexity to the screen, working within a team to release a period drama that speaks to timeless ambitions and flaws.

The Discipline of Craft

Despite the glamour sometimes associated with Hollywood, screenwriting is an act of discipline. Structure, pacing, economy–these are the hallmarks of a well-crafted screenplay. Croner approaches these elements not as formulas but as tools for truth-telling. She has expressed admiration for writers who work with rigor, who understand the architecture of story and the rhythm of dialogue.

Her scripts display this craftsmanship. Dialogue is spare but revealing. Scenes build on one another with cumulative emotional power. She allows quiet moments to breathe while ensuring that each scene moves the story forward. Croner’s work demonstrates that structure and emotion are not opposites, but partners: the bones of a screenplay must be sound in order for the heart to beat.

Legacy and Influence

Though Karen Croner isn’t as well-known as Paul Schrader, her contributions to screenwriting are lasting and influential. In a landscape driven by spectacle and commercial appeal, her work is a powerful counterpoint rooted in what I love most about writing.

At a time when high-concept blockbusters dominate the cultural conversation, Croner’s body of work reminds us of the quiet power of intimate, personal narratives. Her films invite viewers to slow down, pay attention, and connect with the emotional truths unfolding on screen. In that way, her writing doesn’t just tell stories–it deepens our understanding of ourselvesant pursuit of efficiency in storytelling.