Your life is interesting and exciting to you because you are the one living it.  You have emotional connections to the people and events you interact with, therefore those people and events strike emotional cords in you and mean something special to you.

What you want to keep in mind when writing your screenplay is that while your life may seem interesting and exciting to yourself, it will probably bore others to death.  They don’t have the same connection to your old Aunt Sally, so they won’t really care that she died in her sleep.  They didn’t live in your childhood home for 25 years, so they won’t really care that you were devastated when you had to sell it.

My point is that you should steer clear of writing a screenplay about your life. Unless of course you do something extraordinary like work as a hired killer, or as a high class call girl who only screws well-known movie stars.  You are much too close to your own experiences to write about them objectively.

On the other hand, what you should do is take an event in your life that rocked you emotionally, and weave a fictional story around that emotion.  How you ‘feel’ is universal. Use those universal emotions in your writing.

The basic Universal Emotions are…

• Joy
• Acceptance
• Fear
• Surprise
• Sadness
• Disgust
• Anger
• Anticipation

(Click on this link for a complete list of emotions.  Just reading through the list will give you tons of  emotions and spark ideas to write about).

Write about what you know, but fictionalize it and load it with universal emotion.  Then, you’ll have something that will be interesting and exciting for other people.

You want people to feel bad about your old aunt Sally dying?  Weave some fiction around her that will make them care.  Tell how she was so crippled up with arthritis that every move caused her extreme pain.  Tell how she painfully made her way to the kitchen to cook you your favorite breakfast for your birthday and accidently caught her sleeve on fire over the gas burner.  Tell how her screaming woke you up, and how you rushed to the kitchen and saw her writhing on the floor in flames.  Tell how despite your efforts, she died in your arms before the paramedics arrived.  Talk about grief, shock, and guilt!  Oy Vey!!

What about that childhood house you had to sell?   Weave some emotions and fiction around it to make people care.  Tell how the farm house and 120 acres of land have been in your family for 0ver 100 years.  Your great grandfather homesteaded that land.  Built that house.  The old graveyard out back has 100 years of your relatives in it, including your parents who were killed by a drunk driver last year.

Your 5 year old daughter was recently diagnosed with a very rare form of cancer.  There is an experimental drug available that is known to completely cure this type of cancer but it is not FDA approved so your insurance won’t cover the monumental cost of the treatment for your daughter.  Not only that, but the drug is only available in Sweden and you’ll have to stay in Sweden for 6-9 months for the weekly treatments.

For the last 5 years a big corporation has offered your family a ton of money for your land.  They want to tear down the house, re-locate your dead relatives, and build a nuclear power plant.  You are a tree-hugger and despise nuclear power.  But, they are offering more money than anyone else so selling to them is the only way you’ll be able to afford the chance at a cure for your daughter.  You have no choice if you want her to live.

A bit wordy, and off-the-cuff, but you get the idea.

Write using universal emotions if you want to create a screenplay that will be interesting and exciting to other people, besides yourself.

ScriptGirrl

I would suggest reading the script first, if you can find it, and then watching the movie.  Look for deviations in the movie from the original script and try to figure out why those changes were made.  What was it about the script that needed to be changed so that it worked better on screen?  Then, incorporate the those kind of changes into your own scripts.

So, pour yourself an iced cold, refreshing drink; grab a nice big bowl of buttered popcorn; and plop down in that comfy recliner -  It’s Movie Time!

ScriptGirrl

You’ve heard it said that any idea you come up with has already been thought of and done.  That’s true.  But, you can take any idea – even one that has been worked to death,  and put a spin on it to change it into something original and interesting.  Something the same, but different and exciting.

While I’m on the subject of ‘same but different’ I’d like to make a suggestion. The people who will be buying your script are not interested in producing a film that is totally off-the-wall and different from the usual Hollywood fare – especially if it is written by an unknown screenwriter.  Those kinds of films are only accepted and produced if you are well-known, like Woody Allen.  It’s too much of a risk for failure and money loss.

Sticking with a screenplay that touches on subjects people are familiar with are much easier to sell.  But, you need to take those well-worn ideas and put an original spin on them.  And I mean a nice, big, interesting spin – not just little tweaks here and there.

Spend time bouncing your idea on its head, turning it inside out, twisting it around to make it more interesting.

Ask yourself questions about your idea…

• What can I do to make this better?
• Is this like another movie I saw?
• Is there something here we’ve never seen?
• Why will anyone care about this story?
• Is this something people will be busting to tell their friends?
• Will it force a strong emotional reaction?
• Have I seen it before?
• How have I turned the genre on its head?
• What can I do to make it cooler?
• Am I just rehashing somebody elses movie?
• Is there a piece of my soul here?
• How can I take this idea and explode it into something amazing?
• What parts are going to make my screenplay sell?
• Do I have explosions, or steamy romance, or some other exciting action that can be shown in the movie trailer?

Ask yourself which ground-breaking scenes you remember from movies – and then create some that work strongly for your story.

Here are some examples of ground-breaking scenes…

• The food fight in Animal House.
• When Bambi’s mother dies.
• In Pulp Fiction, when Samuel Jackson recites the Bible verses and then kills the drug dealers.
• In Lawrence of Arabia, when Lawrence has to kill Gasim, the mane he saved in the desert.
• In Crash, when the cop rescues the woman, he’d molested earlier, from a burning car.

You get the idea.

Just think of movies you’ve watched and the scenes that have really stuck in your head.  Then, ask yourself, why are those scenes so memorable?  What emotional cords do they pluck for me and why?  Once you have the answers to those questions you can go on to create some ground-breaking scenes for your own script.  Scenes which will stick in the minds and hearts of the script readers and get your screenplay sold.

ScriptGirrl

“Write a screenplay that will change your life.  If you don’t sell it, at least you will have changed your life.” – John Truby

You can’t know what’s going to sell to Hollywood because nobody knows exactly what they want.  Not the producers.  Not the script readers.  But what they do want is something that is of deep interest to people.  Something that is fresh and exciting.

The way to write a script like that is to find an idea that is of deep interest to you.  An idea that fascinates you and boils your blood.  Something that gets you out of bed at night to jot down a bit of action or dialogue that pops into your head.  Something that occupies a great deal of your thoughts.  Something that you are passionate about.

If you have something to “say,” than your script will be worth reading.  Even if you’re writing about an all-nude cat burglar musical, if you are passionate about it, you can make it sing – pardon the pun.

Writing takes colossal mental and spiritual energy.  It’s hard work, and you’ll probably end up with a ton of scripts that won’t sell, a bad case of hemorrhoids, and numb, painful fingers from carpal tunnel syndrome – if you really put your back into it.  So, forget writing screenplays strictly for financial gain because you’ll probably lose in the long run.

But, if you have something that you are dying to say, by all means say it!  Just make sure it’s something that you are passionate about.  You can write the goofiest movie in the world, and if there is something in there that’s got its hooks in your guts, you’ve got a chance at writing something wonderful. Something that will change your life even if you don’t get it sold.

A book that might help you find your story is, ‘Telling Your Own Stories’ by Donald Davis.

Choosing Your Idea:

Does a particular original idea keep popping up in your mind?
Are you in very interested in a particular subject you ‘d like to expand on?
Is there a special world you’d like to create?
Is there a character in your head you’d like write about?
Is there a public domain novel you’d like to turn on its head like Jane Austin’s novel ‘Emma’ was turned into ‘Clueless’.
Is there a bit of history you’d like to populate with characters and give a fresh twist to?
Is there a news story or article you can turn into something fresh and different?

Ideas for your script are all around you.  All you have to do is open your eyes and ears and find something that excites you.  Keep something on you at all times that you can use to record your ideas as you get them.  Write your ideas down or do what I do and record them on your iphone recorder.  Use a napkin or your hand if you have to.  You can transcribe them later.  Just get those ideas down when they come to you!

A last note here.  Whatever you choose to write about, make sure you create characters that get our attention.  Good writing is about the human condition. The more you get bogged down in plot, action, special effects and things that don’t reveal your character, the more they go astray.

If the reader doesn’t care about your people, it’s over.  But, if he/she connects with the characters, you are home free!  Ask yourself, will the reader and producer want to walk barefoot across burning coals to make your movie?  If not, then you need to rethink your idea and twist it around to make it fresh.

Remember that whatever you choose to write about, it has to excite you enough to get you through the original draft and tons of rewrites that will span over a great amount of time.  If you are not passionate about your idea, you’ll never make it through to the final draft.

ScriptGirrl

In order to succeed in Hollywood as a screenwriter, you should seriously consider the following Seven Steps to Screenwriting Success…

1. Keep The Seat of  Your Pants to the Seat of the Chair.

If you want to write a screenplay, you need to write!  You must ‘plunk’ your ass in a chair in front of your word processer and write.  If you don’t already have a writing regimen, you need to start one now.  Start with 15 minutes a day.  If that’s comfortable, keep on increasing your writing time until you have reached your max potential, and keep it there!

It is the regularity that will produce work for you – not the duration!
It’s better to write for 15 minutes a day, then to write for 3 hours each Saturday.  It’s the regularity that will do the job.  Don’t wait for for the muse or inspiration to strike before you start to write, that’s not going to happen.  But, if you faithfully stick to your writing schedule, your muse will show up much more often than if you write irratically.

Every single day you must write.  Seclude yourself and work only on your screenplay.   (That means no web surfing, no game playing, no IMs.  Only writing!)  This will exercise your left brain and your creativity will flow much easier.

2. Watch Every Major Release That Comes Out of Hollywood.

You need to watch every single major release that comes out of Hollywood, and watch the good ones twice.  Because it’s the second viewing that will enable you to analyze the movie using the principles of screenwriting that you learn.

The first viewing will be emotional.  You can lose yourself in the fantasy and excitement of the film.  You watch it for the sheer joy of entertainment.  Then, the second viewing will be done from an intellectual viewpoint.

Make it your goal to watch one movie a week in a theatre, and at least one video a week.  If you can afford it, Netflix Online or Blockbuster Online are both wonderful memberships for screenwriters.  They will keep the movies coming to your door on a regular basis.

You can no longer view movies as something you do on Saturday nights, or as something that you need company to do.  It’s better to do it by yourself.  You will be into the movie more.

This is your career!  You have to see examples of  the principles you are learning so you can internalize them and incorporate them into your script.

3. You Have Got To Read Screenplays

Read screenplays for recent Hollywood releases in the market that you are pursuing. You will learn much more about script writing styles than you can ever learn from a class or a book.

You will learn what concise, simple writing is.  How to go back and forth between action and dialogue.  You will learn how to create a vivid story in the mind of the person who reads your script.

4. Join A Writer’s Group

Writer’s groups are very advantageous.  They can lead you to scripts to read. Some of them even have script libraries.  They are also a great source for critiques of the scripts you are writing.  You can get feed back on your ideas and writing by letting others read your scripts.  And, you can learn techniques and downfalls of script writing by reading and analyzing other people’s scripts.
Not to mention that you may meet some very interesting people who share your love for writing.  You might even meet a ‘connection’ who can get your script read.  Stranger things have happened.

My two favorite Screenwriter Workshop are, Zoetrope and MoviePoet Once you read and critique screenplays, you can submit your own scripts for critique.

5. Educate Yourself on Screenwriting

You need to take classes, attend seminars and read books by professional screenwriters.  I would suggest starting with screenwriters who are big in the business like Michael Hauge, Syd Field, David Freeman, John Truby, Blake Snyder, Linda Seger, and Robert McKee to start with.  But, don’t become a professional screenwriting student or you’ll never get a script written.

Like I said in an earlier post, take a class or seminar and and then write a complete script with the new techniques you’ve learned.  Once you have written that script, or at least a draft for your screenplay, you can reward yourself with a new class or seminar.

Balance is the key!  You must balance your learning with your writing!!

6. You Must Educate Yourself About the Hollywood Market.

You have got to be familiar with what’s going on in Hollywood!!

You need to know:

Who are the producers who are making movies?
What stories are in vogue right now?
What’s getting produced?

The best way to learn what’s going on in the business is to read publications on the subject.  The publication I like the best is Premiere magazine Online.  Other excellent resources are Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and The L.A. Times.

7. Ask Yourself; ‘Am I Getting Joy From Writing Screenplays?’

If you’re not getting joy from the writing process, find another game to play. Life is to short to spend doing something just for the fact of gaining a reward down the road – a reward that you probably won’t achieve anyway if you don’t really love writing.  If your heart is not into it.

It is the writing itself that must bring you joy.  If you aren’t getting feelings of satisfaction from creating characters; or developing stories; or letting those characters emerge from your creativity; or digging in and finding what their inner conflicts are; or imagining how that will look on the screen; or those things into something that would be a movie.  If  those things, in and of themselves, are not bringing you satisfaction, then don’t do it.  Find some other pursuit that will bring you joy.

But, if you are getting satisfaction from the process, then go for it.  You can’t lose.  Sooner or later you will suceed.  You will suceed because you have either sold a script and are making a living, or you will suceed because you can look back at all of the satisfaction you got from the writing.

If you decide that screenwriting is what you want to do and what you love doing, regardless of what other people think you must stand up for your gift. You must work hard using the steps I’ve listed above.   Then, you can offer your gift to the world!

ScriptGirrl

Once you’ve picked the best of your 25 story ideas for your screenplay, the next thing you need to do is create a logline for your story.

What is a Logline?

It’s simple: the logline is one or two sentences that say everything about your story, and is used as a double-check throughout the screenwriting process to make sure that you stay on track with your writing. From these few lines, you should be able to break out every element in a successful screenplay!

A good logline has four key elements:

1. a type of protagonist (your hero)
2. a type of antagonist (the bad guy or obstacle)
3. a conflict (what’s stopping the hero?)
4. an “open-ended question” (what will happen?)

Include an adjective in your logline to describe your protagonist and antagonist.  Isn’t a homicidal barber more interesting than just a barber?

A good logline has a sense of irony; it’s that thing that intrigues us or makes us curious about what happens next.  It’s a surprise twist at the end of the sentence that we didn’t expect.  Yet remember: the logline doesn’t have to tell the whole story.  One of the reasons a good logline intrigues is because we don’t know what happens.  That’s why it should be open-ended.

A good logline has a sense of audience and cost.  Do you know who your movie is for?  Teens?  Women?  Is it a date movie?  Or the big magilla: the 4-quadrant hit like Shrek or Pirates of the Caribbean that appeals to Men AND Women above AND below age 25.  Draw from all four of these quadrants and you’ve really got yourself a winner.  Just make sure you know who you’re targeting!

A great logline must also have a great title.  Title and logline are the one-two punch that makes studio executives swoon and agents reach for their cell phones.  Good ones like Legally Blonde “say what it is,” but do so without being so “on the nose” that it’s unappealing.  My favorite title of all time?  The 40-Year-Old Virgin — not only the title, but the concept.

Your logline should have the four key elements; if not, make it so!  And be sure to look at your logline throughout the screenwriting process to be certain you haven’t strayed off the path of your story.

My logline for ‘Killing Jewels’:

A multi-phobic, withdrawn, young novelist discovers she has an unusual tie with the serial killer who is stalking her.

Feel free to post your loglines in the comment section of this post for others to discuss and comment on.

After you decide on your logline, drop back by my blog for the next tip on writing your screenplay.

ScriptGirrl

The first thing you need, before writing a screenplay, is an idea that will rock Hollywood.  To find that idea, you’ll need to begin with the first phase of writing a screenplay.  You need to brainstorm!

The Brainstorming Phase of writing your screenplay starts with the creative process of generating as many creative ideas as you can – without judgement.  The goal of this stage is Quantity, not Quality!

When you get an idea, just jot it down.  Don’t edit.  Don’t judge.  Just come up with as many ideas as you can.  You can always come back and make them good later. The thing to remember here is: Don’t get it right.  Get it written!
Look everywhere for ideas!

Every time you come across something interesting in a person, a job, a newspaper headline, a news cast, a dream, a joke, a song lyric, or even while watching other movies, ask yourself, “What if that idea were set someplace else?  What if the characters decided to do this instead?  What if that cop was really the killer?  What would happen then?”

Use any stimuli you can find and when you come up with an idea, jot it down. Carry a notebook or a tape recorder.  (I like to use the tape recorder in my cell phone since it’s always with me and handy).  It is the very act of looking for ideas that stimulates the creative process itself!

You can also go to stories that already exist.  Say that you see something on the news about a man who survived for a month in some freezing wilderness after he got lost in a snow storm while camping.  You could track him down and option the rights to adapt his story into a screenplay.  Or you could do the same for an interesting story or book you’ve read.  But, I’d suggest that you write a few screenplays and get a good grip on the craft of screenwriting using your own ideas, first.

Also, adapting your own biography into a screenplay is a BIG No No.  What you find to be exciting in your own life will probably be be dull to watchers. You are much too close, and emotionally tied to your own experiences to be able to be objective or judge what the mass audience will like.  Not to mention that it is very difficult to change your own story and fictionalize it.

On the other hand, it is perfectly acceptable to draw on your own experiences using a setting you are familiar with and then adding fictional characters and/or a fictional plot to that setting.

For instance, if you are a taxi cab driver you know the ins and outs of the profession and you would be more able than a person who has never driven a cab to write a fictional story using a taxi cab as the setting.  Get the idea?

Don’t start writing your screenplay until you come up with at least 2 dozen story concepts.  Once you come up with those 24 ideas, drop back by my blog and I’ll tell you how to choose the best possible idea from your list of ideas by using Hollywood guidelines and a concept called, The Log Line.

ScriptGirrl

Screenwriting is a profession and just like for any other profession in the world, if you want to excel at your profession, you must first learn the basic rules and then practice what you learn.  And, in the case of screenwriting, no matter how much you think you know about the craft, there is always something new to learn that will spin you off in a new, exciting direction.

To learn the basic rules, there are three things that you must start doing:

1. Read every movie script you can get your hands on.

Reading scripts will not only teach you the technical aspects of writing a screenplay, in other words location, dialogue, and action, it will also give you a feel for creating timing, and tension in your own work, and it will show you how other screenwriters use the ‘tricks of the trade’ as you learn those yourself.

Free movie scripts can be found at a multitude of sites on the internet.  I have included several of those sites on this blog under the heading of: ‘Find A Script’.  If you have a printer, it is much nicer if you can print off a script so you can carry it around with you and make notes on it.  I’m a bit sneaky on the ‘script printing’ thing.  Can’t afford the ink and paper?  Try printing it off at work.  Consider it a benefit of the job.  ;)

2. Watch a ton of movies.

Watching movies is the next necessary thing you need to do.  Immerse yourself in movies of all genres – Romance, Comedy, Action, Adventure, Animation, and Horror.

The first viewing should be for the pure joy of watching the movie.  Then, watch it again, this time from an analytical viewpoint.  Everything that is said, done, or shown in a scene has a very specific reason for being there.  In other words, nothing is said, done, or shown that won’t move the plot of the movie forward.  Nothing is irrelevant!  Try to figure out the reasons why those things are in each scene.

I personally like to watch the Director’s Cut after I’ve watched the movie a couple of times.  You can get a lot of information about what different things in the scenes mean and why they were placed there.

If you can afford it, I’d suggest a membership at Netflix or Blockbuster.  I have one at Netflix and am always amazed at how many of their movies I can download instantly for free, while I’m waiting on my next movie delivery by mail.

3. Write, Write, Write every day!

The last thing that you must do is to set aside time every day to work on your screenplay.  Don’t worry that your writing sounds lame or that the plot is dwindling off, just keep writing.  Having a routine writing schedule will keep the creative side of your brain in shape and you’ll learn all kinds of things from your mistakes.  Then, as you learn the professional techniques of screenwriting, your work will improve and before you know it, you’ll be putting out some killer stuff!

Don’t get into the rut that a lot of beginning screenwriters get into.  Don’t become a professional student by attending hundreds of classes and seminars, thinking that you’ll start writing when you know what your doing.  You’ll end up with a ton of book knowledge but not a single, concrete script to show for your efforts.

The best way to learn, is to take a class or seminar and then write an entire script using the techniques you learned from those lessons.  Then, take another class or seminar from a different teacher and write an entire script using the new techniques you’ve learned before you attend a new class.

Yes.  There’s always a new and exciting teacher with a different approach to screenwriting out there.  And, all of those techniques are valid and worth learning to add to your writing arsenal.  But, if you don’t practice what you learn, as you learn it, you will lose it.

Summing it up, read scripts, watch movies, and write every day!

ASIDE:

I’m thinking of adding a ‘Chat Board’ where my readers can discuss different aspects of the craft of screenwriting -if there is any interest from my readers for something like that.  Drop me a line and let me know.

ScriptGirrl

The bad news is that in the process of upgrading my WordPress, I somehow lost all of my posts.

The good news is that I am back in full-swing now and will be posting my ‘Script Tips’ on a regular basis.  Luckily, I kept copies of some of the posts I’d already made so I will upload them and start from there.

I’d like to thank all of my followers for waiting so patiently for me to return to posting on this blog.  I has been a very active year in Hollywood for me but I have accomplished a lot of goals.

Time to settle back in to posting my Tips and working on my own screenplay, ‘Killing Jewels’.

Scriptgirrl