Writing a Screenplay

When approaching the subject of writing your own screenplay, a myriad of questions may arise. Why should I do this? How do I start? Many other questions no doubt fly through your had at a million miles an hour. As long as you have a story, and the passion to tell it, you can work your way through all of those questions; providing them with meaningful answers.

A fantastic place to start, and what many people will tell you, is to take classes. A scriptwriting seminar can be a huge help to your understanding of the entire process as a whole, as well as help give you a shot in the arm creatively. There is never anything wrong with taking in a little outside influence to help get your creative juices flowing.

Another good way to start yourself off would be by downloading and reading some of the scripts to your favorite movies. You will find that many are available online. When you read them, pay close attention to their use of white space on the page. In other words, how long are their descriptions, their action sequences? How wordy are they? Do they leave much to the imagination, or are they explicitly detailed? Learn from the way that other, successful screenwriters write. Doing this will also give you a great idea of how formatting works for screenplays, as well.

At this point, you are almost ready to begin writing! Before you put pen to paper, so to speak, you really need to flesh out your story. Your characters need to be fully developed and realized. At this point, you want to outline your entire storyline, from A to B, start to finish. Every little snag you can think of for your characters to run into and overcome should be in there too. Make it as detailed as you think you have to. Some people only need a two-page outline for a feature length screenplay, and others need a 50 page outline. It's all what works best for you, as long as you are able to keep your story straight. Your finished outline will be your road map to writing your screenplay.

With your outline in hand, you should now be able to get started. I would highly recommend grabbing a screenwriting program or template before you do so. Final Draft is still a staple, and industry standard, and works exceedingly well at it's job. It is also a bit pricey, especially for what it is. Cheaper alternatives include searching for and downloading free Microsoft Word screenplay templates to work with. They certainly can get the job done, even if they aren't quite as clean and polished as a proper program. The best alternative, in my mind, for the budget writer is a fantastic program called Celtx. It is always free, and will format your screenplay for you, just as Final Draft would. Once you have obtained your software of choice, you might want to take some time to familiarize yourself with it, and how it works.

Once you have reached this point, there is little left for you to do beyond writing your screenplay! Start at the best place, the beginning, and work your way forward, all the way through to the end of your outline. A decent rule of thumb that I use to keep myself motivated and moving forward is to accomplish at least ten full pages every day, if not more. Using this guideline, you can actually finish your screenplay in a relatively short amount of time. Also, when writing your first draft, try not to worry about length too much, either. The most important thing here is your story, so don't muck it up because your brain was too warped with worries about length!

Now that your first draft is done, you are ready to do some revision! Come on, everyone loves revisions, right? They make your story shine! A great way to kick off the revision process is to print out a hard copy and hand it off to someone who's opinion you trust. Let them read through it, and mark any and all suggestions, questions, comments, or changes in a brightly colored ink. Once it has been returned to you, read through the entire manuscript yourself. With a different colored ink, make even more changes to your work. Fix errors that you notice, and build upon the comments and suggestions of your first reader.

Take your newly decorated script and go back to your file. Start making all of the revisions you deem necessary as marked in ink on your first draft. NOW is the time to worry about length! Make all the changes you need to, and really clean the hell out of your piece. Once your second draft is done, I would absolutely recommend using a professional screenplay editing service. It can be expensive, but if you are serious about your script moving forward and potentially seeing the light of day, it is absolutely worth it! Getting a professional consultant can be the difference between a mediocre piece and a brilliant one!

At this point, my friends, I am fairly certain that you can call your work done! You've done what many could not: started writing a screenplay and finished it! That is an accomplishment in and of itself! Now, all you need to do is move forward, if you so desire, and attempt to get it made! If you have no wish to do that, then I suppose your journey ends here, and there's nothing wrong with that, either. Sometimes, we just need to get a story off of our chest.