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Writing
Screenplays
Cinematic
writing is an exercise in minimalism. If
you adapt a 120,000 word novel into a two hour screenplay you’ll
have to re-tell the story in less than 30,000 words. This is because
cinema is a visual medium. The pictures tell the story. There’s
no opportunity to describe what is happening inside a character’s
head like there is in a novel (actually you can do it, using voiceover,
but let’s not get complicated right now), so it’s more important
than ever to be able to show the audience what is happening. An
agonised facial expression on screen might be the equivalent of
a page of description in a novel in which the character’s thoughts
are spilled out for the reader.
Film
also doesn’t allow the luxury of long conversations that are frequently
found in novels. The dialogue must be crisp and punchy. If the average
length of a speech is more than two lines then your script is in
trouble. If your dialogue extends for pages and pages with no action,
then again your film is too static and needs more action. By action
I don’t necessarily mean car chases or explosions. Action can be
picking up a pen and playing with it suggestively. It could be an
instruction for the actor to change facial expression or sit down.
These things are tools with which to tell your story and are just
as important as dialogue. A correctly laid out page of film script
equates to about a minute of screen time, so the number of pages
you need to write is the same as the number of minutes in a movie.
Most feature films are 90 to 120 minutes long, so a script of 90
to 120 pages is the right length. Commercial, successful films follow
a formula that is very rigid. Most audience members in a cinema
won’t be aware of the structure, but once you know how the stories
work you can predict plot twists almost to the second.
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Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk
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The
best book for screenwriters currently on the market is
How to write a Movie in 21 Days by Viki King.
I've read
just about every screenplay writing book on the market, and
this is the only one to hold your hand and guide you through
all the excuses for not writing, the guilt at failing to complete,
the fear of actually starting your project and all the causes
of writer's block imaginable. Her method for systematically
forcing a script to come out of you in just 3 weeks really
does work. I've produced 2 first draft screenplays that way
(her method is meant to get you onto the second or third draft,
but even getting 120 pages written in any form is an achievement!).
You can read other books about plot and theory and character,
but if those books don't grab your wrist and force you to
actually write a script then what's the point? Buy this book
first and get that screenplay out of your head and onto the
page.
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Any
kind of script has to be correctly formatted. Using a template for
Word or specialist formatting software that includes its own word
processor can greatly speed up the script writing process. There
are plenty of basic, free templates available as well as products
such as Final Draft which serve the professional end of the market.
Free
templates from the BBC
The BBC has some free
script templates you can download and use in Word to ensure
correct formatting. The templates are OK, but I've used them and
found them to be a little temperamental. Plus their layouts are
sometimes a little odd and are not correct for the entire broadcast
industry.
Free
screenplay template from Microsoft
Microsoft offers a free download of a screenplay
template, designed for use with Microsoft Word 97 or newer.
ScreenForge
This is a nifty little package created by Apotheosis Pictures Productions,
an independent film production company. It's free to use for a 45
day trial period, and is designed to offer the familiar functionality
of Word whilst creating Hollywood style screenplays. Download
ScreenForge.
Mac
templates
This screenplay
template for the Apple Mac runs with Microsoft Word (5.0 or
greater), Nisus (3.0 or greater), Write Now (3.0 or greater), Mariner
Write (1.4 or greater), and MacWrite Pro (feature-film format only).
The download is free.
Final
Draft
I switched to Final Draft for script writing and found it to
be much better than the BBC templates and a couple of other independent
programmes I've tried. Final Draft 6 was solid and reliable, and
then I upgraded to Final Draft 7. The initial release of version
7 was full of bugs and was unusable. As you'll see if you look at
online reviews, the company quickly released bug-fix editions and
they've got it all straightened out now. I initially contacted them
and complained and they were very open about the problems and were
working hard to fix all the issues. So now I can be comfortable
in recommending Final Draft 7 to any script writers. This really
is the professional software you need - just make sure you download
all available updates after you install it to make sure it runs
reliably. It doesn't get any better than this. There are templates
for screenplays and television sitcoms, and it has some cool features
like the ability to create PDFs of your scripts and a useful facility
for reading the script aloud using different computer-generated
voices for the various characters. You can even produce reports
that show the dialogue spoken by just one character, which is handy
for checking the frequency of catchphrases and consistency in dialogue.
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