Writing Screenplays Read online

  [ALTERNATIVE] Let’s say that a couple splits up one morning, then one of them has an accident and loses his memory. Every night he returns home, not realising that his relationship is over. Every night his ex-lover has to explain the situation and turn him away. Or perhaps she takes pity on him and allows him to stay just one more night, only to throw him out again in the morning. How long can that go on for, and how will she resolve it?

  60. Rolling the dice.

  You can use dice to create TV shows. Make a few lists and number each item so it can be chosen by rolling dice. You’ll need to list all the characters, including the minor ones. Then list all the possible subjects they might discuss. Then list all the locations. Now you can start rolling the dice and writing down the results. Roll the dice twice to select two characters. Roll again to select the subject they discuss. Roll again to choose the place where they discuss it. Roll again to select which of the characters wins the argument. You can continue doing this for as long as you like. You’ll often find that by linking a few of the resulting scenes together, or changing their order, a storyline will emerge.

  [EXTENSION] You can extend this idea by making extra lists: objects, what form of revenge (if any) the loser takes against the winner, modes of transport, amounts of money, emotions, and so on.

  61. Running times.

  You need to know about running times, especially if you’re writing with a particular TV slot in mind. You don’t need to get the timing down to the exact second – that’s the editor’s job once everything has been filmed. But you do need to get reasonably close so the actors don’t run out of lines and your favourite scenes don’t get chopped. It’s best to time other people reading your script so you can get the timing right. You’ll probably speak too quickly if you read it yourself. Remember to leave enough time for non-speaking actions. Each page of your script should equal one minute of the show or movie – that’s the industry convention.

  62. Script format – aids.

  It’s vital that you get the layout of your script absolutely spot on, or you risk being rejected immediately. The BBC has some useful guides to script formats on their writer’s room website. You’ll also find some free Microsoft Word templates (called Script Smart) that will help you format your scripts correctly and make it quicker and simpler to add scene and character details. The Script Smart web page also gives details and examples of many formats, including screenplays, sitcoms, radio plays, novels, short stories, and stage plays.

  63. Script formats – books.

  Most books on screenwriting include some sort of guide to formatting and laying out your script correctly, but the most comprehensive guide we’ve found is in The Screenwriter’s Bible by David Trottier. Another book worth considering for a simple guide to script formats is The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Screenwriting – specifically chapter 16.

  64. Script format – examples.

  Visit Drew’s Scriptorama website to see how scripts should be formatted. There are lots of real scripts for you to download, including well-known movies and TV shows, so you can see exactly how it should be done.

  65. Script format – software.

  Just about everyone who’s anyone in Hollywood uses Final Draft for writing screenplays these days. It’s a fully featured word processor specifically designed for writing movie scripts, TV episodes and stage plays. You don’t need to learn about script formatting rules because Final Draft automatically formats your script to industry standards as you write.

  66. Smaller production companies.

  If you’ve written a screenplay and it’s been rejected by all the major production companies, where do you turn to next? There are hundreds of smaller production companies you could approach. On TV they usually flash up their logo after the end credits, so study these and track them down via their website. In the case of movies this is much easier – just spend a couple of hours browsing in your local video store. The names of all the production companies will be on the back of the DVD case. Or you can look up the details on the Internet Movie Database.

  67. Soap operas and sitcoms.

  Writing an episode of a soap opera or sitcom isn’t just a case of writing thirty pages of action and dialogue – one page per minute of screen time. Unfortunately things are much more complicated than that. For a start you probably haven’t got thirty minutes. A half-hour show might only require 21 minutes of material. You have to knock off time at the start and end for the opening titles and closing credits, plus time for the station to run trailers and announcements. If it’s a commercial channel you need to knock off time for ad breaks. You also need to know when the ad breaks will occur, because you’ll need to put a cliff-hanger there to make viewers want to come back afterwards. Depending on the show, the last scene in the episode might need to end with an even bigger cliff-hanger to make people want to watch the next episode. You’ll also need to allow a few seconds at the start and end of each ad break for the ‘end of part one’ and ‘part two’ captions or logos.

  You might also have to alternate between several different plot lines, with some of them being dramatic, some humorous, some romantic, and so on. Some actors might not be available for a particular set of episodes, so you might have to adapt your script to fit their availability. And there’ll be all sorts of other things going on that have an impact on what you can and can’t write – ongoing storylines, last-minute changes, introducing new characters, and so on.

  These shows usually have to fit a tight framework, and every episode must have a virtually identical structure. This can actually make writing them relatively straightforward. But as you can see, you don’t have as much time to play with as you might think.

  68. Speculative scripts.

  Speculative scripts are a good way of getting producers to notice you. Your aim is to show them how good a writer you are, not to get your speculative script made into a movie. In effect, a speculative screenplay is a full-length showcase or sample of your writing. Some speculative scripts do end up as movies, but that usually wasn’t the writer’s intention. You’re trying to get a producer to commission you to work on other projects, such as adapting a novel into a screenplay or rewriting someone else’s work. Someone might have come up with a brilliant concept for a movie, for example, but lack writing ability. The producer spots the potential in their idea but needs to bring a better writer into the project – either someone he’s worked with before, or someone who has demonstrated his writing ability by sending in a brilliant speculative script. This can be your way into the movie business – with one finished movie to your credit, the producer will be interested in seeing more of your work.

  One interesting advantage of writing speculative scripts is that you can ignore many of the constraints and limitations that would be imposed on a movie intended for production – such as budget, special effects, number of characters, locations, and so on. All you’re doing is showing off your writing ability and creative imagination, so you can afford to go wild! And since it’s the quality of your writing that needs to shine through, you don’t need to worry about coming up with a unique concept.

  69. Storyboards.

  Many writers develop their screenplays using storyboards. These can also be a useful aid when it comes to pitching your screenplay to a producer. Until now, producing a storyboard has been time-consuming, difficult and expensive – you needed to be able to draw, or hire an artist. But here’s a different way. It’s rather basic, but it’ll help you organise your ideas properly and get your point across. Use a presentation program such as Microsoft PowerPoint to produce your storyboard. In fact most office software suites come with some sort of presentation program that will do the job. You can make each frame of the storyboard a slide in your presentation. When you’re pitching the screenplay to someone, you just need to run the presentation and describe the action in each frame or slide as it appears on the screen. When it comes to printing your storyboard, choose one of the handout formats that lets you put 4, 6
or 8 slides on a single page, with notes (action, dialogue) underneath. The program will probably come with a small amount of clipart that you can import directly into each slide, then move, resize, or rotate it as necessary. That saves you having to draw anything too complicated. If you’re using PowerPoint, the built-in clipart gallery also has a link to Microsoft’s online gallery where you’ll find thousands more images for free. For even more images, or if you’re using a different brand of presentation software, you can invest in a clipart collection on CD or DVD. There are several massive collections available at a very reasonable price, each containing hundreds of thousands of images. Most computer stores should have them, and you can also get them from online stores such as Amazon.

  70. Storyline: Flatliners in hell.

  Have you seen the movie Flatliners? Three medical students stop their hearts so they can have a near death experience. Here’s a variation, perhaps set some years in the future. Let’s say that a new batch of students find the notes that the original Flatliners team left behind. In this version of the future it’s possible to record dreams, and the students want to find out whether near death experiences are dreams or hallucinations, or whether they’re real. At the same time they want to find out if Hell exists. So they each commit a murder. They reason that if they spend the rest of their lives redeeming themselves they won’t go to Hell when they eventually die – if Hell exists at all. They stop their hearts as in the original movie, but find that it is extremely difficult to get back from Hell. One of them dies in the process and is stuck there, with no chance of ever coming back to redeem himself. The other two suffer deep mental scars and are left barely able to function. Perhaps they go into a mental institution for a while before turning to the priesthood to try to redeem themselves. They have shocking warnings for everyone about what awaits those who go to Hell. They are determined never to go there again themselves, and want to stop people from ending up there. But will anyone take any notice of their warnings, or will they be dismissed as ranting madmen? Did the dream recorders work? Do they have proof that Hell exists? Or do they have proof that it was all a dream? And if it was just a dream, what the heck happened to their friend?

  71. Storyline: kids in charge.

  How about putting the children in charge? That can work well in a comedy. It could be a children’s comedy or a family comedy. How about if a group of children or teenagers were left in charge of adults? What if they had to run a prison, for example? Or a hospital? Or a school? How did they end up in charge? Obviously things will go very wrong, but why exactly? Is it because the children misbehave? Or because they lack knowledge and experience? Or because they don’t understand the implications of what they’re doing? Maybe it’s all of those things. But the results should be very funny … unless you’re one of the adults they’re in charge of, or you have to sort out the mess afterwards!

  72. Storyline: watching you.

  This idea is a bit experimental, but should be great fun. It consists of many short scenes in which a character is watching someone else do something. It’s up to you what that thing is. But that character is being watched by someone else. And the person who is watching him is, in turn, being watched by someone else. We focus on each character, see what he’s seeing and doing and listen in on his thoughts, and then the camera zooms out and we move on up the chain to the point of view of person who’s watching him. And so it continues. Some people will have mundane thoughts, while others will feel a variety of emotions from anger, lust, hate, jealousy and so on. And the reasons why they feel those emotions will vary too. And all these feelings come from watching someone while they watch someone else.

  You could make this movie circular, so the last person in the chain turns out to be the one you first started with – he’s watching the person at the far end of the chain. This gives the movie a definite and satisfying ending. You’ll need a lot of characters, but only for a minute or so each. If some of the people are connected or related to each other, you could wave in some sort of storyline with a hero, heroine, villain, lover, and so on. But if they are unconnected, or if you don’t want a storyline, the whole movie can just be a long chain of people all watching each other.

  Perhaps you could also have people outside the chain who can appear throughout the movie and take on bigger roles. Perhaps they can watch several different people rather than just one – they might be investigators on surveillance duty for example. Perhaps some of these people outside the chain can be watched by several people too.

  73. Structure: turning point.

  Virtually every movie has a major turning point at exactly the halfway point. Up until this point the hero has been passive. That doesn’t mean he hasn’t been involved in any action; it means he’s been reacting to events caused by other people, or suffering at the hands of the villain or some opposing force. But from the mid-point onwards he takes a more proactive role. He causes the action and decides which path to take, rather than simply waiting for something to happen and then responding to it. This turning point might be subtle and almost unnoticeable, or it might be perfectly obvious, but it needs to be there, and it should be as close as possible to the halfway point in the movie. It doesn’t matter if it isn’t an action movie – the same turning point can be found in comedies, romances, mysteries, and so on. Read as many scripts and screenplays as you can, and watch as many movies as possible – you should be doing this anyway. When you’re watching a movie, use a clock to work out where the halfway point is, then pay special attention around that time to see if you can spot the turning point. Once you’ve trained yourself to spot turning points you’ll see them all the time and wonder why you never noticed them before. Make sure you put them into your own screenplays too.

  74. Subplots versus main plots.

  A story that would be too weak to work on its own can sometimes make a great subplot. Here’s a story you might like to use. A girl has been set a homework problem by her maths teacher. She can’t do it, so she asks her father to help. He can’t do it either, and starts asking other people to help. Eventually he finds a maths professor who agrees that it’s a particularly difficult question. He agrees to work on it and call back when he has an answer. Eventually he does, and the girl and her father go to see him. He has to talk them through the answer a number of times because it’s so complicated. Eventually the girl understands it and commits it to memory. She puts the answer in her schoolbook, complete with all the working out. But it turns out that there was an error on the homework sheet her teacher gave her and the real question was quite simple. You might like to consider rewarding the girl and her father in some way.

  That’s a great short story, but it probably wouldn’t work on its own as a movie. So let’s turn it into a subplot. We need a bigger story for the main plot. Let’s say that the girl’s father is a master criminal. We can show him plotting to steal priceless jewels, committing the crime, getting involved in police chases and so on. And all the while he’s churning over the maths problem and looking for someone who might know how to work it out. We see two very different sides to him.

  Or how about if his daughter has an illness or disability and he’s stealing the jewels to raise money for her treatment? The subplot shows how much he really cares about her. He isn’t the one-dimensional hardened criminal that he first appears to be.

  Next time you come up with an idea for a story, think about whether it would work as a main plot or a subplot. If it’s a subplot, you can, as we’ve just seen, easily construct a main plot around it. The main plot contains all the action but the subplot contains (or supports) the movie’s real theme, and adds an extra dimension to the characters.

  75. Synopses only.

  It’s foolish to go ahead and write an entire script if you haven’t been given an agreement to proceed by an interested party. That means coming up with the idea – and the concept – and preparing a synopsis (a type of outline). Make the synopsis sound as dramatic and interesting as possible without g
oing overboard. You’re trying to get people fired up about the concept and its possibilities. A synopsis shows them that there’s a whole story there, not just an idea that might not go anywhere. They might also want to see a sample scene, fully written, to check your writing ability and style. If that gets them excited and they want to see the whole screenplay, then you can go ahead and write it. Otherwise, just send the synopsis somewhere else and start working on your next project while you wait for a response. You can get a lot more work done that way and get a lot more projects out into the marketplace, only writing complete screenplays if the right people are interested in seeing them.

  76. Targeting specific actors – 1.

  It can often help to write your screenplay with particular actors in mind. Whether or not these actors appear in the final production doesn’t really matter. It would be nice if they did, since you’d then be able to see on screen exactly what you saw in your head when you wrote it – a very rewarding experience. Writing for specific actors gives you predetermined characteristics to work with. You’ll know how they behave in action scenes, how successful they’re likely to be, the sorts of phrases and vocal tones they use, their on-screen chemistry with other actors, and so on. This can make your writing much more powerful, as well as making it easier.