Writing and Screenplay.

 flux:

Sakura, I wish you all the best. Follow your dream. There is more than one way to skin a cat, as the saying goes.

Thank you so much. I will try my best. 

 Sakura:

@dramas _ nocturnal how should one learn script/screenwriting? Is learning from Youtube good enough? 

- donedealpro.com is a good website that many professional Hollywood writers used to use (they've since migrated to twitter and crap like that, for bigger fan-bases, but some pro's still remain).  Anyway, check the site out.

- Download the FREE program, FadeIn.  I used Final Draft for years but it crashes on Windows and will never be fixed (screw Apple)!  Be warned though: due to formatting, FadeIn has a longer page count than FD (which is why I convert my work to an FD file before saving it as a PDF.  Seriously, I lost something like 12 pages off my last project by doing this).

- Your first screenplay will likely be terrible!  Actually, your first 5 might all suck... but you'll grow with each. 

- ALWAYS COMPLETE YOUR PROJECT.  It might have holes in, it might suck, it might interest nobody other than you, but the good thing about writing is that you can always go back and improve it (just be sure to save it as a new file, to keep your drafts so you can compare both your growth and ideas/scenes you've added/taken out).

- Be sure to outline your complete story before you begin (yes, it's a buzz to just sit down and write, but you'll get stuck more often and run into more plot holes that way).

- Write what you'd like to see.  If you don't like it yourself, what's the point?

Anyone genuinely interested is welcome to PM me for tips.

 Over 9000:

Damn, and then I realise this is an old thread...

Please don't worry about this being old. I keep checking this thread for inspo sometimes because helpful comments (like yours) can come here anytime. Speaking of that, thank you so much for taking your time and writing such a detailed comment. I need to remind myself about  "ALWAYS COMPLETE YOUR PROJECT" because I do have a bad habit of starting to write suddenly and hit a blockroad very quickly. The outline thing does not come naturally to me always as I am more of a discovery writer but I will try my best to do more on the outline part.

I had to break the post in half because my computer crashed (damn updates!) and I didn't want to risk having to type everything a 3rd time.

I was saying how outlining is telling your story.  So you put pen to paper (I find that this gets the brain juices flowing better than fingers on a keyboard) and play around with your story until you're happy.

When you write your script in FadeIn - or whatever you're using, you're technically rewriting, but in more detail.  If you knew how you wanted to open your story before, unless you changed it during the outlining process, you still know how you want to open it, so you basically fill in all the blanks.

At the end of the day, you're going to rewrite in some capacity.  ALWAYS.  I think it was Picasso who said, "A painting is never finished", and a novel/screenplay is the same - there will always be sentences you'll want to change, dialogue you'll want to adjust - or plain delete - after hearing it read out loud... etc.

My last screenplay, I wrote it and I was happy, and I showed it around and people loved it... but it wasn't getting picked up!  Then someone basically said to me, "It's sh*t," - which isn't good feedback by any means - but I managed to get the great feedback of, "X's character ruins the whole thing."

Aha.  So I knew that some people plain hated "X" (not the actual character's name, obviously) and that meant I either had to change him or ditch the whole story.  "X" was an essential character, so there was no way to simply throw him out!  So I completely rewrote him... and the screenplay became absolutely phenomenal!

Fingers crossed it all takes off now.

Lastly, you may want to play around with your logline before you even start outlining.

What's a "logline"?

It's essentially your sales line.  It's very, very important.

Let's suppose you watched a film on TV and it was really good - how do you explain it to your mates?

"Hey, bra, wassup?  So, like, I just saw this killer Tom Cruise on TV - totally worth checking!"

NO!

So look at the TV guide and see how that explains the film in 1 or 2 short sentences; this is the logline.

From this, we can say, Edge of Tomorrow (Tom Cruise film) is about:

In a losing war against an invading alien race, a soldier accidentally obtains the secret ability which had given the aliens the edge: time travel.

So now we can see that the basics of the plot:

- Aliens invade

- Humanity is losing

- A regular soldier (nothing special about him) gain the key to defeating the aliens!

You can rewrite the logline any way you want!  The above is just a quick example to get you going, but really, your logline should:

1) Want the reader to read more!

2) Give the reader an idea as to what the story's about.

3) Give the reader an idea as to whom the main character/s are.

4) Hint at the stakes.

 ksk79:

@Over 9000 Thank you for your instructional posts.  

You're most welcome!

Actually, since I'm being helpful, I'll go one step further.

Transformers (I hated it, by the way, but that's neither here nor there), is about... what?

Michael Bay wasn't interested in making a big budget advertisement for toys, so the writers said to him, "It's fundamentally about a boy and his car" (paraphrased).

I remember reading an interview with the writers and they said that, when they started, they didn't have any  clue what kind of story to come up with... but knew that at some point, they wanted the bad robot car to chase the yellow hero car and then they both turned into giant robots and started fighting.

THIS IS THE START.

No, it's absolutely not the film's beginning, but it's the initial thought around which all others are formed.  The writers had to decide how they'd go from the title to that moment, what happens afterwards and, ultimately, how it all ends.

A lot of writers would advise not starting your outline at the beginning, but first of all, creating the ending!  This is because having a satisfying ending is a very, very difficult thing to come up with.

One MUST also remember that stories need a human element.  People watching 3 hours of pointless shoot-outs get bored, but if you know it's because the spy is trying to keep his family safe, it's engaging.

So Transformers was pitched to Michael Bay by its human element: a teenager buys a car, loves his car, finds freedom, meets a girl... oh, wait, hang on, his car is a giant robot in disguise from another planet?  And that planet's at war?  WTF?  And the evil enemy robots are now on Earth, trying to kill both him and his car/robot buddy before they can find the good guys' leader who crashed somewhere in America?

These are the stakes.  They have to build up and keep building.  The teenager gets a car - a lot of people can relate to that!  He meets a girl he could so easily fall in love with; again: relatable.  Now we throw in stuff that no-one would care about were it not already for those human elements: war on another world, giant robots - let's be honest: had it not all involved the kid's car, who would care?

I hope this helps.

I accepted your request.

I use MDL in spurts, so if I don't reply for a few weeks, it's because I've not checked in!  I travel next week, so I'll be away from this site for probably 1 or 2 weeks.  Apologies also for any typo's/formatting errors above - if anything doesn't make sense, just ask and I'll clarify.

If you've never written a screenplay before, let me know and I'll post the basics so you can dive straight in, as soon as you're done outlining.

Have a great journey!