Writing your First Screenplay

There are many rules set out in books about writing your screenplay and I recommend the book Teach yourself Screenwriting by Ray Frensham as the definitive guide to the subject.

But, when I started writing my first screenplay, Shoulder the Sky, I relied heavily on the screenplays of Clerks/Chasing Amy by Kevin Smith and Fight Club by Jim Uhls as my guides to the format and layout.

But before you start writing ask yourself the following questions:

1. Why am I writing a screenplay? If it is to get rich then I'm sorry but many screenplays just don't get made!

2. What is the story? Do you have a beginning, middle and an end? If not then you are stuck at the start. If you do not have at least one of the three you are going to struggle.

3. Do I feel passionately enough about the idea? When you begin writing it becomes sort of like a marriage. You will have your rough times, but if you don't have the passion then it will not come through in your writing.

4. Do I know the Characters? Who are they, what are their relationships, where they have been and where they are going. Look at Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars. We know he is Darth Vader now, but originally it wasn't until The Empire strikes back that we find out that Darth Vader was Anakin. George Lucas knew and so must you!

5. Is there are Resolution? If the characters do not grow for better or worse then you have a story that is going nowhere!

Now you have your idea, you have your characters and you have your outline. If the idea is all in your head and no where else write it down in the form of a treatment and write biographies for your characters up to the point in which they are introduced. When I wrote Shoulder the Sky the idea had been in my head for so long and so had the characters and their story so I was able to go straight to the Exploratory draft of the screenplay.

The hardest part of writing a screenplay is the actual writing of it. An empty page (be it a type writer or PC document) is a daunting thing to look at but once you have put down your first piece of the puzzle then it all becomes much easier as you have your start.

There are many ways of actually writing your screenplay but the way I like to do it is the write down the beginning and go until I have run out of ideas or I loose interest in the section I am writing (especially if it is one of the necessary explanation scenes in which little is done but to set up a strand of the narrative). Any time you hit a wall then try and write another part of your script.

My second (and at time of writing this) uncompleted Exploratory draft of Past Tense is written when I'm running out of ideas for the first drafts of Shoulder the Sky and My Lovely Revenge.

When I hit the walls in the dialogue I tend to be thinking ahead to scenes that I have not written yet so during these times I write notes where I think the scenes that I have envisioned will fit into the screenplay. The early draft of Shoulder the Sky had around two pages of these notes as I had the script written and complete in my head I just needed to write them down. These notes can range from one word to a sentence explaining the action that will take place within the scene. If I have a good line of dialogue that one of the characters will say that becomes the marker. One line of dialogue can catapult the scene.

On the DVD Commentary for Once upon a time in Mexico Robert Rodriguez says that Quentin Tarantino told him "I just get two characters talking to each other and then even I'm surprised by what they say".

If you know the characters you are writing then this is true. While writing the dialogue you must become the character and know what motivates them and why they are following the train of thought or path that they are. You must be able to identify with them no matter how outlandish they are.

Writing is the same as acting as for the duration of writing your screenplay you have to inhabit the life of your characters. The best personal example I have of this is while I was writing my third screenplay, My Lovely Revenge.

I had an opening, an ending and the central characters, but, the middle was the part I hoped the characters would write for me and lead it in the direction that could take it to where I wanted it to go.

Much to my surprise (while writing a scene I had envisioned since the start) one of the central characters instigated a direction I never expected. While writing for the characters Samantha I took My lovely Revenge in a direction I could never have imagined yet I still was able to retain the ending that had already been half written.

Every character central to your narrative has to have a flaw from the protagonist to your antagonist. Secondary characters that work closely with your hero have to have motivation to justify them being there.

If a characters has no use then why are they there? Even the support need to be well rounded.

To look at two basic examples would be Luke Skywalker in Star Wars A New Hope and Hans Gruber in Die Hard.

At the start Luke is reluctant to leave Tatooine "It's so far away" but through the events that take place (the murder of his foster parents) the path is put in front of him. Or in the Empire strikes Back, Yoda says of Luke "....Always looking to the future, the horizon....never his mind on where he was what he is doing". This is true as this flaw is what leads Luke to his confrontation on Bespin which causes a revelation he was not prepared for and the loss of his hand.

Hans Gruber, the archetypal screen villain is motivates by Greed (the robbery of Nacatomi bank) and it is also his flaw that costs him his life at the hands of New York Cop John McClane.

By the end of your narrative The Hero should have over come his flaw (Luke becomes a Jedi) and your Villain is taken down by his (Hans is thrown out of a Skyscraper).

Hans greed which was his motivation for the taking of Nakatomi towers was inevitably his downfall at the hands of Cop John McClane.

If you are writing about a subject you know little or nothing about ask yourself why you are doing it? If you still want to write about the subject matter then research it and if you feel comfortable then go for it.

Study the conventions of the Genres that your movie falls into and not just one movie watch many. Learn about all aspects of the Genre and look at the characters and how they interact with each other. Look at the relationships between the Protagonist and the Antagonist. What are their goals. If your movie is a sub genre (like Action-comdey) then all the more fun! Look at existing movies in that genre and how they compare to the stand alone genres.

For semi-autobiographical Shoulder the Sky I looked at the movies Chasing Amy, Notting Hill and Fight Club. Fight Club was used for the character narration while I stripped Chasing Amy for character progression and Notting Hill for the pacing of the narrative.

Now the time frame that your narrative takes place is important for the pacing. So look at movies that take place during the time span that yours intends to. Shoulder the Sky takes place over a twelve month period so Notting Hill was the perfect choice to study for pacing as it takes place over a similar time scale.

If I were to set a Narrative in real time then I would start with Phone Booth. For a day I would look at Clerks, or a month, Donnie Darko.

Distractions are the easiest thing to hinder any wannabe script writer. Be they what's going on outside, to flicking on the Internet for research and spending an hour looking on IMDB looking up your favourite movies and cast/crew.

When I'm writing a screenplay I'm easily distracted, but, I try to write as much as I can when I can. Due to writing for my Web sites my time is limited and I can even justify writing the site as reason for not getting back to writing a screenplay that I hope to eventually send off.

George Lucas wrote American Graffiti to the music that you hear during the film and Star Wars to classical music.

I find Music is a great thing when I'm writing as it can put you in the mood for writing a scene or sequence or it can emphasize a scene, but most of all, music can inspire.

Before I start writing I select a load of CDs that I want to listen to that will bring the screenplay to life and start my creativity. It can be anything of any genre and it might be as far removed from what you are writing, but it can help.

A script is like a marriage you have your good times you have your bad times but ultimately you feel protective of it. To complete the equivalent of 90 minutes of screen time takes a lot of effort so it is natural that you will have this attachment and the longer it takes to write with passion the more attached you will become.

With Shoulder the Sky once the Exploratory draft was complete and I sent it to my friends to read I was not prepared for some of the feedback that I received. Self Criticism is one thing but when someone else points out the same mistakes and ideas that don't work you can become very defensive and protective so be prepared for criticism.

With Shoulder the Sky the best comment I was given was in regard to an intense love scene in which one of my Readers asked me if it was supposed to be that funny. If he had not found it funny then I would know that I had a problem as it was the one thing that I did not want to alter.

A Exploratory draft following the conventions set out in Teach Yourself Screenwriting should be around 90-12 pages, Courier, 12. This amounts to 90mins to 2 hours or the standard length of many motion pictures. One page should average at one minute of screen time.

A thing that I found while working on the Exploratory draft of Shoulder the Sky was that it went over the 120 page marker. This does not matter as it is your Exploratory draft and the more ideas that you have in your Exploratory draft the easier you will find when you are working on your following drafts.

You will find that an excellent piece of dialogue or scene might just not fit into your screenplay, but, don't delete. When I write I never delete a scene I just start a new document. Ideas can be recycled and used later.

Read Star Wars The Annotated Screenplays and see how George Lucas recycled ideas from the Early drafts of A New Hope, The Empire strikes Back and Return of the Jedi and see how unused ideas have resurfaced in the Prequel Trilogy.

The best two DVDs that chart the progression of how a film can change to the point it can be created in the Editing are Mallrats and Dogma.

Watch the US versions of Dogma Special Edition and Mallrats Collectors Edition (both available Region 1 from www.playusa.com) and listen to the Commentaries and watch the Deleted scenes to see how a screenplay can alter from the Exploratory draft to what you see on the screen.

When I received the criticism back from my Readers regarding the Exploratory draft of Shoulder the Sky (and after a few rereads) the first thing I changed was the opening to make it more optimistic.

To look at the opening scenes of the Exploratory and First Drafts of my own Shoulder the Sky (with Annotations) you can see how important an opening scene is in setting up the narrative.

DISCLAIMER: The script extracts that you read here are not properly formatted to Official recognized Screenplay specifications, but give an idea. Again refer to Teach yourself Screenwriting by Ray Frensham for the official spec.

SHOULDER THE SKY
EXPLORATORY DRAFT:
FADE IN:
INT: SAMANTHA'S FLAT - EARLY-MORNING HOURS

BRODIE (Brodie became Mickey in the future drafts) sits next to SAMANTHA on her couch watching a TV screen. She is crying.

BRODIE (V.0)
This is me now, at the end? The only thing I know is that had I not met her my life would have been allot different.

A short and simple opening that was inspired by the movie American Beauty. I just loved the way in which Kevin Spacey's voice over opened the movie and revealed the ending at the start. I felt that this would be a perfect opening and summed up the style I thought the film would take. It's also a red herring.

FIRST DRAFT:
FADE IN:

INT: MICKEY'S FLAT - EARLY-MORNING HOURS

MICKEY RHODES, SAMANTHA JACKSON, PAUL LEICESTER and CHRIS BOWDEN are sitting on a sofa in Mickey's living room watching JAWS on DVD, on the floor are empty Nacho and Chocolate bags and wrappers while in the corner is an Ice box filled with alcoholic beverages and cokes.

The flat is a shrine to movies. On the walls are framed posters of Kevin Smith and George Lucas' movies as well as autographs and pictures of Mickey and Samantha with celebrities. In the corner is a PC littered with Star Wars figures and a stack of Film Magazine and DVDs. In the center of the room is a couch with a big screen TV, DVD player, Video and satellite.

SAMANTHA
Eat them you pussy

CHRIS
Yeah, eat them you wuss

PAUL
Take a bite out of the bastards!

MICKEY
If Bruce's bites them the movie will be a bit on the short side. They have to build the narrative before you can kill one of the central characters.

SAMANTHA
Way to get all sensible on us Mickey, have a drink and lighten up.

The scene continues for another page....

The character of Paul was added during the First draft, while Chris was there from the start but his character's relationship with Samantha altered during this draft.

This is a more upbeat opening than the Exploratory Draft and sets up the relationship between Mickey and his friends earlier.

The Jaws reference and Star Wars/Kevin Smith posters are a blatant homage to Kevin Smith.

A simple thing like the changing of the opening can go along way into starting the process of chipping away at your screenplay and making it the best it can be. I found it a catalyst in the sense that by rewriting the opening it enabled me to get rid of some of the explanatory scenes later and make Shoulder the Sky more streamlined.

Protecting Yourself:
Now you may wonder why I have not uploaded the whole screenplay so prospective buyers can read it!

Two words Copyright Theft.

Put an unsolicited screenplay on a public domain like a web site and if someone likes it then it can be plagiarized or stolen. I would advise any Wannabe Script writers to be careful where they publish their documentation's.

I love to talk and write about my screenplays but, if you notice I give no details about what the scripts are about or the plot.

Writing these pages about the Theory of Film is open to plagiarism, but if you are doing it for an Essay or Dissertation beware that your Lecturer or Examiner may also have read them or any other site you have looked at for information so be careful and remember to reference in your Bibliography.

Most of all, Don't place your completed screenplay online thinking no one will rip you off.

Good Luck in your Creative Writing Endeavors.