Writing Screenplays Read online

  [EXTENSION] Enrol on a film/video course yourself to meet people, make connections, and learn how films are made – always useful to know when you are writing them.

  45. Make this movie!

  What’s the greatest movie never made? What movie would you really like to see made? Do you have a favourite book or TV show and think: this would make a fantastic film? Write the screenplay and send it off!

  46. Make your own video.

  Get a digital video camera and have a go at creating and editing your own movies on your computer. This gives you a tremendous insight into the world of movie making and editing, and will help you to learn to see things visually as you write – always having the perfect shot in mind.

  The latest video cameras have USB connections or memory cards that you can plug straight into your computer to download your movies for editing. Some also have built-in DVD recorders, so you can simply take the DVD out of the camera and pop it into your computer. If you buy a used camera, you might need an IEEE 1394 ‘Firewire’ card in your computer to allow you to connect the camera and download your movies. These cards are not expensive and are very easy to install if you don’t already have one. You’ll also need some video editing software. You can buy this, or you might find that something suitable is supplied with your Firewire card. And you’ll often find good quality video editing software on the free CDs and DVDs that come with computer magazines. You’ll need a reasonably fast computer to be able to work with video, but if you bought yours within the last couple of years it should be more than adequate. This will open up a whole new world to you – and it’s great fun as well as educational. Make sure you get a tripod though. There’s nothing worse than coming back from a hard day’s filming to find wobbly video that’s completely unusable.

  Good video editing software includes: Adobe Premiere, Adobe Premiere Elements, Pinnacle Studio, Sony Vegas Movie Studio, and Corel VideoStudio.

  47. Mashed-up movies.

  Talk to your friends and colleagues about what would be in their ideal ‘mashed-up movie’ – where you take the best scenes from lots of different movies, and choose your favourite actors to play the parts. For example, you might end up with a remake of Gone With The Wind but include the stunts from a couple of James Bond films, the climax from Towering Inferno, the bit from Titanic where Leonardo DiCaprio freezes to death, have Mel Gibson and Penelope Cruz as the stars and the villain played by Alan Rickman. Could you make that into the perfect screenplay? Probably not in this case, but if your version is more promising, go ahead and write it.

  48. Must-see trailers.

  I sometimes see a trailer for a movie and I think: I’ve definitely got to see that. I’m sure that happens to you too – and probably to everyone else. The big question is: what is it about these particular movies (or at least the trailers) that grabs our attention so much more than other movies? I don’t think it’s one particular thing. It might be because it covers a particular subject or theme that we’re interested in. It might because of the amount and type of action that the trailer promises. It might be because it’s based on a book, TV show or play we liked. It might be because it stars a particular actor. Or it might have been made by a certain director. Whatever the case, the trailer (and hopefully the movie too) has a certain quality about it – the ‘X-factor’. Your mission is to find out what that mysterious X-factor is, and then make sure your own screenplay has it.

  Movies affect different people in different ways; I might say that a certain film has the X-factor, but it might leave you cold. So next time you see a trailer and you mentally add it to your ‘must see’ list, stop for a moment and think about what exactly makes it such a ‘must see’ movie.

  Try watching movie trailers with other people too. Make a movie trailers compilation video and turn it into a party! At the end of each trailer ask everyone whether that movie is a ‘must see’. If anyone says yes, ask him why. Get everyone to join in the debate. If some of them think it sounds like an awful movie, find out why they think that.

  For the trailers that most people didn’t like, ask everyone what they would do to turn them into ‘must sees’. What would they change, what would they put in or take out, and so on?

  And you could ask everyone to come up with the ultimate movie trailer – for a movie that doesn’t exist (yet). They can either do that individually, and come up with several trailers, or work as a group and come up with just one trailer that everyone likes. Or you can do both – start by having everyone come up with their own trailer, then have a vote on the best bits from each one that will go into a single ‘perfect’ trailer.

  Your aim is to come up with a screenplay idea that scores as many ‘must sees’ from as many people as possible. When you hit upon a really high-scoring one, go away and write it.

  49. Packing in the ideas.

  If you watch a really great movie you’ll often find that it’s stuffed with brilliant ideas. You might watch it over and over again and keep noticing new things – a one-liner you’d missed, something happening in the background of one of the scenes, a sign that makes you laugh, a humorous manufacturer’s name on a gadget, and so on. Viewers love it if you can not only pack in lots of details but add them in layers too, so that some are noticed immediately while others only become apparent on a second or third viewing. In order to do this you’re going to need a vast number of great ideas. Before you even start thinking about writing your screenplay, you’ll need to spend a few months finding, writing, or playing around with ideas for scenes, characters, events, inventions, bizarre or ironic accidents, names, background details, jokes, and so on. Much of this stuff will never get used, but you need to accumulate it anyway so that you can pick the best of the best when you come to write your screenplay. You might not even know exactly what the story will be at this stage. But just keep accumulating the ideas and something will start to emerge. Look for newspaper and magazine articles that you could wring an idea out of, surf the web, watch TV, listen to the radio, and so on. Let’s say that you only include the top ten percent of all your ideas in your screenplay. If you manage to squeeze in a thousand clever ideas, you’ll need to have come up with ten thousand ideas originally. Yes, it’s a lot of work, and it will take you a considerable amount of time, but it’s great fun and well worth doing as your screenplay will outshine everyone else’s.

  [EXTENSION] You don’t have to come up with all these ideas on your own. It’s usually more fun to play around with ideas with other people. If things start to get silly, that’s fine; that’s often when some of the best ideas start to evolve – the ones that no one else would ever have thought of.

  50. Predicting the future – 1.

  The screenplay that you start writing today won’t be released as a movie for two or three years. So somehow you need to be able to predict the future and work out what sort of movies are likely to be popular then. There are plenty of clues if you know where to look. There are databases on the internet where screenwriters can list what they’re currently working on. The idea is that other writers will see this and not start writing something similar. Fair enough, but if you see the same theme or topic cropping up time after time then you’ll know it’s likely to be popular. Next, consider the novels that are around now – the bestsellers that are obvious candidates for movies. Those movies will probably be released in around two to three years. Then there are the successful movies right now. If they’ve done well at the box office then it’s highly likely that there will be a sequel within a couple of years. Then there are the forthcoming events and anniversaries that will have movie tie-ins that coincide with them. There will also be movie versions of some TV shows – look out for shows that are very popular in both the UK and USA (or worldwide) and would make perfect candidates for movies. Movie websites and blogs will also advise you on upcoming movie plans, industry rumours, actors committing themselves to projects, and so on. I use Digital Spy for this sort of information. So now you can see into the future and foreca
st which movies will be released in two or three years’ time. Now you need to see if you can slot yours in amongst them.

  51. Predicting the future – 2.

  Successful screenwriters can anticipate what audiences’ tastes will be in the future, so this is a useful technique to learn. Try drawing a graph of things like interest rates, public spending, currency values, employment rates, movie attendance figures, video rentals, box office takings, successful movies (and successful movie genres) and failed movies (and failed genres), and successful and failed novels and fiction genres. Go back 15 or 20 years (or further if you like) and then extend your graph a few years into the future. You’re looking for repeating cycles, and the graph will make these easy to spot. Based on your research and the graphs, you should be able to make a reasonable guess as to what the world will be like in two or three years’ time. Of course it can only be a guess, but at least it’s an educated guess that has some chance of being right, rather than a wild stab in the dark that will probably be wrong.

  52. Producers – working with.

  Every producer works hard to put his own stamp on each TV show or movie he makes. He’ll have very specific requirements in order to achieve this, and you need to know what they are. Some producers are only interested in thrillers, or horror, or action movies for example. Each will have his own preferred genre. If you’re working with, or planning to work with, a particular producer, it’s a good idea to study the sort of work he’s produced previously. Watch each one several times, looking for common themes, ideas, genres, actors, styles, effects, humour, character types, and so on. You should also take every opportunity to question him on exactly what he’s looking for, and what he’s trying to achieve.

  53. Reformatting.

  If you can’t get anyone interested in your scripts or screenplays that doesn’t mean they aren’t any good. You could try rewriting them in a different format, such as a novel. This gives you a second chance at success. If the novel is successful you might be asked to adapt it for TV or as a movie script. At this point you can simply hand over your original script. Or you might choose to wait a while before handing it over – to pretend that you had to work hard on it!

  [EXTENSION] If you’re good at writing screenplays but no good at writing novels, you could try working with a novelist and get him to do the rewrite for you, or work on it together as a collaboration.

  54. Resources – Screenwriters Utopia.

  This valuable website gives details of the scripts that production companies are buying at the moment, and also features script reviews, articles on script writing, profiles and interviews with authors, Hollywood industry news, scripts for sale, and much more. A must for all screenwriters.

  55. Resources – The Burry Man Writers Centre.

  This website has a fantastic list of links to screenwriting resources, hints and tips, competitions, script formatting information, screenwriting tools and software.

  56. Revealing characters’ thoughts – 1.

  Just about the biggest problem screenwriters face is that they can’t let viewers experience the characters’ thoughts directly. The most common solution is to show the characters’ thoughts and feelings through the things they do. If you want to show someone feeling angry, for example, then you show him hitting, kicking or throwing something aggressively. Whether you choose to also mention the character’s facial expression is up to you. Many screenwriters argue that it’s best to leave that up to the actor to add his own interpretation – all you have to do is say what he does. If you already have a story in mind and you know something about the characters, make a list of all the emotions they’ll go through. Imagine yourself as each character, and feel their emotions along with them at each point in the story. Now think about their actions as they experience those emotions. The actions will match each character’s personality – they won’t all express their grief in the same way. Viewers don’t need to be able to see inside that character’s head as they would in a novel, because it’s quite obvious how he’s feeling. So viewers can empathise with this character just as much as a reader would.

  Examples of a character’s action might include:

  Anguish – hands wringing, pacing, unable to settle. Joy – leaping and dancing. Grief – silently slipping away and going for a long tearful walk. And so on.

  57. Revealing characters’ thoughts – 2.

  Some TV shows, especially comedies, are becoming more intimate. They do this by letting us inside the head of one of the characters. We can hear his thoughts as a voiceover. Two recent comedy shows that use this technique are Scrubs and All About Me. There may well be others. A few years ago this was almost never done so the use of the intimate voiceover seems to be a new trend. As it’s so effective I’m sure it will become more common in the future. It adds an additional emotional layer that can’t be done in any other way. TV viewers – who are used to watching passively – now becomes as emotionally involved with the characters as they do when reading a novel. That has to be a good thing. But let’s hope it isn’t abused or overused. Give it a try and see if it adds anything to your own writing. At the very least, try to watch one of the shows I mentioned and see if you agree with me that it adds emotional impact. How about using this idea in a movie rather than a TV show? How about using it in something other than a comedy?

  58. Revealing characters’ thoughts – 3.

  Think about a character’s goals and motivations. It’s easy enough to show these thoughts if you’re writing a novel, but how do you do it on the screen? The best way I can think of is to find a physical way of representing his thoughts. It could be as simple as a facial expression, such as a smile or a wicked grin. Let’s say that our hero is going to enter a race. He might have seen the posters around town inviting people to enter, but he doesn’t think he’s fast enough, so he hasn’t done anything about it. In a novel, the readers would know all this, but the movie audience doesn’t. So let’s introduce a friend for him to talk to – a good way to reveal a character’s thoughts is to have him speak them out loud. Perhaps we could show him running for a bus. Someone else is running for it too, but our hero manages to catch the bus and the other guy doesn’t. His friend is already on the bus and she tells him that he’s just beaten the regional champion in whatever race it is. If he can beat him running for a bus then he can beat him on the racetrack. Now he can chat to his friend about the race and why he hasn’t put his name down for it. Next, our hero and his friend could have a training session on the track to see if he really is fast enough to qualify. If he’s too slow then he’ll need to practise some more. The big question is will he be fast enough by race day? What if he beats the champion a second time, away from the track, but still can’t match his time on the track? Now he’ll be even more determined. And if the champion says or does something to upset him then the stakes are raised even higher. Now he has a personal vendetta against the guy; he’s determined not just to qualify for the race, but to beat him. We can show this through his facial expressions and the way he talks to his friend. His increased determination should give him an extra spurt of energy and speed – so he should succeed in the race.

  [TWIST] The other guy might have been dismayed that our man beat him when running for the bus. He’s the regional champion – no one around here should be able to beat him, he says to himself. So he increases his training regime too. The race is going to be very close!

  59. Reversal example.

  Have you seen the movie 50 First Dates? Here’s the basic storyline: a man falls in love with a woman who has memory problems. When she wakes up each morning her memory of the previous day has been erased and she has no idea who he is. So he has to make her fall in love with him all over again. Now let’s look at how we could reverse that idea and make it our own. There are two interesting ways of reversing this story. The most obvious is to have a woman fall in love with a man who has memory problems, but that’s really just repeating the same story. But let’s add in a few (st
ereotypical) factors that we know about men and women: most women are looking for a long-term relationship whereas most men would be happy with an eternity of one-night stands. So we’ll make the man the forgetful one. Each day he falls in love with a different woman. Some of them are happy to go along with the one-night thing, but one is looking for a long-term relationship. That woman now has to stop him from falling for any other women and make him fall for her – every day. If she ever fails then he’ll spend the night with someone else. At first she fails all the time, and it makes her feel awful. (Does she do anything to these women to make them pay? Does she take them out of the picture so he can’t fall for them again?) Eventually she finds a way that works and tries to build a long-term relationship with him. But is that what he wants? If he wakes up at her house each morning but has no idea who she is, and he doesn’t fall in love with her at first sight (how good do you look first thing in the morning?) then he might be tempted to stray. Especially if he has no idea that he’s even in a relationship – he was single the last time he remembered. The next woman who comes along might be considerably better looking than the one he’s apparently living with. She could try locking all the doors and windows, hiding the keys, and plastering the house with photos of them together. Will that be enough? Or does she still have a lot more work to do? Does his memory ever recover? Is there any way that he could have a relatively normal life if he used lots of gadgets and left himself messages the previous day?