Writing Screenplays Read online

  Once everything is in place and you’re completely happy with the way the story flows, go back to the beginning once more and write the whole screenplay. By this stage you’ll know the whole story inside out, you’ll know the settings like the back of your hand, and you’ll know the characters as well as you know your own family – probably better. All you have to do now is add the flesh to your skeleton to create a living, breathing masterpiece.

  28. Getting to know the business.

  Join a local acting group – amateur dramatics, theatre group, whatever you can find. You don’t have to take part in their performances; they often need backstage helpers too. Or you could just sit and watch from the sidelines. Go to rehearsals and performances to see how the whole the show is put together, how the actor grows into the part, and so on.

  29. Hollywood standard – 1.

  For many years some of the biggest Hollywood studios would only accept screenplays that conformed to a certain standard. First, they had to follow the structure of the classic myth. For full details read The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell and The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler. Second, they had to follow the pattern recommended in Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting by Syd Field. You would do well to follow the instructions in these books as closely as possible, at least for your first few screenplays. The information in them is still relevant today.

  30. Hollywood standard – 2.

  These days Hollywood studios will also consider screenplays that do not conform to the traditional standard. The book Alternative Scriptwriting: Writing Beyond the Rules by Ken Dancyger and Jeff Rush contains several interesting new storytelling methods that have been successfully turned into movies.

  31. Hollywood tricks – silent movie.

  Since it’s the action that’s the most important part of a screenplay, you can adopt a Hollywood trick and write the outline as if it was going to be a silent movie – nothing but action. Once you’re completely happy with the outline you can add the dialogue. You’ll find it a quicker and easier way of writing screenplays and you’ll end up with a much better result.

  32. Hollywood tricks – who’s it hurting?

  There’s a famous ‘Hollywood question’ that asks: who is it hurting? Apply that to any situation you come up with and it should give you a story that you can develop into an entire movie (or a novel or short story if you prefer). The longer your list of people who are hurt by the situation, the more detail you can add to your story. But don’t feel that you have to use everything on your list. List as many as possible and then choose only the very best.

  [EXAMPLE] A flood causes a river to change its course. Who is it hurting? Well … the people whose homes are now flooded, the people who depended on it previously for water and power and are now left high and dry, the merchants who are now unable to sail their ships in and out of the city, and so on. What will happen next? Most people will probably want the river moved back. Is that possible? How much would it cost? How long will it take? Whose lives and livelihoods would be disrupted? What will happen in the meantime? Would the next flood just move it back again? Can future floods be prevented? Some people might prefer the river to stay where it is. That gives us a great conflict to build our story around. Our simple little one line idea about a river changing its course has almost instantly become an entire movie.

  33. Ideas: a family of crime solvers.

  Why not write about a family who solve a major crime, such as a murder or the theft of something valuable? Each member of the family will play an active role. The mother, who might be forever spying on her neighbours for things to gossip about, would be great at surveillance. The father, obsessed with figures and accuracy, would be good at analysing data and making deductions. The children can go out and look for clues and wander around freely where adults would look suspicious. They might also have computer skills, a wide social network (both in the real world and online), tenacity, a high degree of motivation – and be able to get into small spaces. Together they make a fantastic team and they’re bound to catch the villain in the end. This would make a great movie, and there’s plenty of scope for sequels as they solve other crimes. It could also be a TV series, with plenty of potential for movie spin-offs.

  34. Ideas: contrasts.

  Contrasts work well in screenplays, especially in comedies or romantic comedies. There are many examples of movies and TV shows where the characters are complete opposites or badly mismatched. How about a very tall woman who’s dating a tiny man, or vice versa? Or you might have friends, or brothers, where one is very large and the other is very small. How about a large family where everyone is a different size? What problems will they all face living in the same house? Some won’t be able to reach the shelves, while others will be forever banging their heads on the doors or ceilings. What will they do? Perhaps they could divide the house into two; one half for the small ones and one half for the large. Another example of a contrast is where a single person lives in a world of couples. Does she want to be part of a couple too? Or is she happy being alone? Well, it wouldn’t be much of a story if she was happy with her situation. What other examples of contrasts can you think of, and what stories come to mind?

  35. Initiating event.

  Many screenplays begin with a seemingly innocuous event, often called the initiating event. Its importance soon grows and becomes alarmingly apparent as the story progresses. For example, we might see someone buying some lottery tickets. Later we understand that he is part of a terrorist group funded by lottery wins, and that they have rigged things so they always win, or at least make a substantial profit from their investment in lottery tickets. Or we might see someone taking a driving lesson, and he later drives the getaway car that crashes, killing several pedestrians. Or a boy stares in wonder at a shooting star, as his father explains what it is. Little do they realise that it is in fact a comet about to hit the Earth. What other initiating events can you think of? They all have the potential to become great screenplays.

  36. Inspiration – posters.

  Imagine that your screenplay is finished and successful. The finished movie is being shown at your local cinema. What does the poster look like? What is the defining moment that summaries the whole story in a single image? When you’ve worked out what that image should be, draw it or paint it, or describe it to an art student and get him to turn it into a movie poster for you. Now you’ve got something inspirational to hang on your wall as you write. As well as inspiring you, the poster represents the finished movie, and that in turn represents success. Positive thinking is a great motivator in helping you achieve that success. Look at your poster regularly and remember what it represents. One day it will become real.

  [ALTERNATIVE] Another approach is to let an artistic friend read the outline of your story, then get him to draw a poster for you based on what he thinks is the most important scene or the most striking image. The image on the poster needn’t be a single shot from the movie; it could be made up of a montage of different shots that represent its essence.

  37. Just for practice.

  Try writing your own episode of a well known TV show. How far you stray from the real show is entirely up to you. You might choose to write an episode that could really be used. Or you might let the characters say and do things that – while still in character – they would never say or do in the show itself. You might decide to exaggerate their personalities slightly. You could also do this with a well known movie. Perhaps you could write a sequel, or rewrite it in a slightly different way, or turn it into a spoof. You probably won’t get paid for writing this stuff, but it’s great for practise. And there are plenty of websites that will be very happy to publish it.

  38. Layers – 1.

  The better the movie, the more layers it seems to have, so let’s look at a way of adding an extra layer. For this example we’ll base the screenplay on a theme rather than starting with a plot or a character. The theme wi
ll underlie everything, affecting the way the story unfolds, the way the characters behave and the way the audience perceives the movie. Let’s choose anger as our theme. The hero gets angry – very angry indeed. He might even frighten himself sometimes. But he’s able to control his anger. Perhaps he goes to anger management classes. But when he finds himself in a difficult situation he is able to use his anger in a positive way and solve a serious problem. For example, a sudden release of pent up anger – that the audience has seen building – could give him the strength he needs to lift something that he wouldn’t normally be able to lift. Now we turn to the villain; another very angry person. He shows us the dark side of anger. He is not able to control his anger. His violent rages make him unpredictable and impossible to reason with. He acts rashly. He makes mistakes. And that will be his downfall. Our hero, who can control his own anger, will always come out on top in the end. What about the other characters? What aspects of anger will they represent? How will they affect the storyline and what impact will their anger have on other characters. Try to explore anger (or whatever your chosen theme is) from as many different angles as possible. As you do this, characters and ideas for storylines will start to emerge and you can begin to assemble your screenplay, arranging the different elements into some sort of order, and adding extra scenes and characters to plug any gaps. If you don’t fancy anger as your theme, you might like to consider one of these instead: love, fear, hate, trust, secrecy, accuracy, truth, lies, obsession, or desire.

  39. Layers – 2.

  The next layer you can add to your screenplay is resonance, or ‘truth’. This is where the audience recognises themselves in the characters, or recognises elements of their own lives and the real world in the locations and situations being depicted. The way the characters act and react is so realistic that the audience feels that they would behave in exactly the same way, or make exactly the same decisions – even though they’ll never find themselves in that situation.

  Your screenplay could have a massive impact on your audience: the shocking realisation of the fragility of life, love, civilisation, or security, for example. It pays to think about making situations and character behaviours as realistic, logical and plausible as possible. Make your characters ordinary people with ordinary strengths, intelligence, weaknesses, feelings and so on. But of course, they probably have one or two extra qualities that separate them from the rest of us; qualities that ensure that they will (eventually) succeed when the rest of us would probably fail. These extra qualities are not superpowers though. An ordinary person could get them if he was prepared to put in a lot of effort, overcome his fears, and so on.

  Look for ways of making the events and situations in your screenplay as realistic as possible, so that the audience can imagine it happening in real life – even if it never could. Have your story take place somewhere that really exists, and which the audience probably knows – such as London or New York – and the events will seem even more realistic. If the events that have the biggest emotional impact are set in places that people know and care about – such as well known buildings or tourist attractions – then the effect is heightened even further.

  40. Layers – 3.

  This little collection of layers comes right at the end of the movie. Our hero has worked hard and finally achieved his goal. So let’s add some reward layers for a feel-good ending. He probably became close friends with a woman during his quest, so we can bring them together as lovers. He might receive some sort of reward or prize for achieving his goal, and he’ll probably get all sorts of job offers as a result – leading to a dramatic upgrading of his lifestyle. Perhaps he rescued an animal during his quest. Maybe he even took time out to look after it and take it to the vet – whose bill he paid out of his own savings. So let’s bring that animal back again – fully recovered – at the end and give it to him as a pet. We could even have the vet present it to him during the award ceremony. More rewards? How about if the pregnant woman he rescued names her baby after him? Or perhaps a hospital, school or museum names its new wing after him. By this point you’ve probably softened up the audience to such an extent that just one more layer of niceness will have them crying their eyes out. Heck, let’s do it: bring on the children from the local school to sing a song in his honour!

  41. Layers – 4.

  This layer is all about how earlier events in a character’s life shaped him and affected his present life. Someone who had a very poor childhood might continue to be careful with money as an adult, even if he’s now immensely rich. Another character with the same impoverished background might spend lavishly as an adult to make up for it. If he spends too lavishly he might well find himself back where he started of course. Yet another character who began life in the same circumstances might remain in poverty throughout his life, unable to find a way out. What other aspects of a character’s youth might affect him later in life? How might someone who had a wealthy upbringing turn out? Refer to the three examples of the poor person and try to come up with three alternatives for a wealthy person. Childhood hopes, fears and motivations might also shape a character’s later life. Being trapped in a storm – or even a heavy rain shower – could lead to a lifelong fear of storms. A child who loses a parent might spend his whole life searching for a replacement mother or father figure. Think of your own life too; what aspects of your childhood made you into the person you are today? How could you use this in a movie? By understanding a character’s past, the audience understands and empathises with his present actions, and can anticipate how he’ll behave in the future. You can also turn his past against him, making him anticipate and then face those same fears all over again.

  42. Layers – 5.

  This layer’s purpose is to encourage people to see your movie more than once, and reward them when they do. The idea is to deliberately add lots of extra details to the screenplay and make sure they’re overlooked on the first viewing. They don’t really seem that important or make much sense until the viewer knows how the movie ends. But when he watches the movie a second time he already know how it ends, so all those extra details you’ve hidden in the ‘for subsequent viewings’ layer suddenly become apparent. What these details are and what they add to the movie is up to you. They could be clues, extra background details, extra character details, moments of humour, in-jokes, funny product names, mini subplots, or even (if you’re really clever) major subplots that only become apparent the second time around.

  43. Layers – 6.

  Another layer of your screenplay is the subtext. This is the hidden message – what your screenplay is really about. On the face of it your screenplay might be all about finding and conquering a new world, a mission to recover a stolen gem, or a new police recruit who’s determined to wipe out crime. But the subtext might carry a very different meaning. For example, the loss of independence and identity during wartime, the fact that lust underlies every decision we make, or the impossibility of changing what fate has in store. Every movie has a subtext – though some are more obvious than others. The secret of a good subtext is to keep it subtle and don’t preach. If the audience ‘gets it’ straight away then you’ve been too obvious. Ideally, the hidden meaning shouldn’t become apparent until the viewers discuss your movie with their friends afterwards. Or they’ll read a clever critic’s review and discover the hidden meaning that they never even knew was there. And then they kick themselves for not ‘getting it’ sooner. Why have a subtext? Perhaps because it allows you to tell people about a particular subject, idea or cause that’s important to you. If you said it directly you wouldn’t be able to sell your screenplay and no one would want to watch the movie. So you have to hide it. Or you could just put the subtext in for fun. The critics will look for one anyway – and they’ll find one even if you didn’t put one in. So you may as well start thinking about something that’s important to you and what you want to say about it, so you can hide it in your script. As always, the best way to learn about this is to watch mo
vies where you already know what the subtext is. You might even find a website that lists them all for you. Once you know they’re there, all the hidden references will be much easier to spot. And then you’ll know how to add them to your own script.

  44. Local film festivals.

  How are you going to get noticed as a writer? You need to have a body of work behind you that you can show to producers and directors as evidence of your ability. Most cities have a film festival of some kind, and local entries are usually welcomed. So why not make a few short films to show at such an event? Start by finding out the requirements: what sort of films are they looking for, how long should they be, are there any particular genres or subjects that they would particularly like to see, what format should it be in, and so on. The best way of finding out everything you need to know is to go along to the next festival, get involved, watch the films, talk to people, go to the workshops, ask questions, and so on. While you’re there, see if you can recruit some volunteers to help you make your film. Check out local colleges and evening classes for film/video courses, and ask if anyone there would be interested in helping you – it would be a useful addition to their portfolio. The tutor might be able to suggest past students who could help you. You’ll need actors too, so try local amateur dramatic societies, theatre groups and drama students, or ask friends if they know anyone who can act or would like to have a go at it. When it comes to filming your script, be prepared to make changes if something doesn’t work, or if someone comes up with a better idea. Once it’s all finished you’ll have one or more films ready to show at next year’s event. Hopefully your work will attract a lot of attention.