Hot answers tagged screenwriting
16
Yes, they do.
They open with a problem occurring -- an unknown disease that no one can figure out.
House has to be conned into taking the case.
They sit around a room and throw ideas at each other.
All of the ideas are wrong.
Patient nears death and no ideas are working.
House has a magical epiphany and solves the case.
The End.
(Also, don't forget the ...
9
Ralph certainly covered the structure of individual episodes: the patient's symptoms escalate; the team tries one treatment after another (with dramatic results, in some direction or another); House solves the case.
That's a fair description of the single-episode plotline, but there's a lot of other tools in the House arsenal - and ones which, I think, are ...
8
For a non-spam answer:
I highly recommend Celtx. One of my friends and I decided to write short plays last summer and this was the program I used and I loved it. I found it very easy to use and figure out and I had never really written plays before then. http://www.celtx.com/index.html
7
Maybe you shouldn't be writing.
Maybe you should be collaborating. Sketch the thing out and hire a
partner, or a ghostwriter.
Short stories. Fewer words, and less need to create a world. You only
need to create as much as is necessary to make the story hold up.
Tell stories out loud instead. Find a library which needs volunteers
(a bit redundant, I know) ...
7
If you didn't create an outline — that is, if you didn't know beforehand how it was going to end — then you're suffering from impeded arborvision (you can't see the forest for the trees).
1) Put it in a drawer and don't read it for a month. Come back with fresher eyes. You'd be amazed what you catch.
2) Hand it off to someone else and ask your ...
6
Screenwriting:
http://www.screenwriting.info/
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Screenwriting
Playwriting:
http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/introtoplaywriting
Writing for the Stage: A Practical Playwriting Guide
6
I'm not sure if you're asking how producers make movies based on stories/books or how you could do the same with a story idea you have. For the sake of completeness I'll answer the second one (Shan had an excellent answer for that first case).
I've just finished taking a screenwriting module in my degree and that covered the process. First you'd create an ...
6
Your audience is absolutely allowed to know more or less than your main character, but remember to consider how they are being presented the story. If they are watching from just over the main character's shoulder for most of the film and then are pulled away into a scene without him/her, it could be very jarring. Remember that your film has a narrator and ...
6
It's an excellent idea.
Your considerations are quite correct - a first draft can be absolutely terrible; most of its value is in fleshing out general details, structure and plot. It gives you a skeleton framework which you can the edit the heck out of. Therefore, there's no reason to worry if some parts are not all they could be. You know what improvement ...
5
I think your approach is wrong. Rather than trying to write what you love, you are trying to write for all the market segments. This almost never works. If it was so easy to cater to different market segments with a single book, publishers would have done so by now by using salaried writers.
Instead, you not only have vampire novels, but vampire romance, ...
5
There are a couple of schools of thought about this. Some say that you can add camera directions for effect, some say never.
Personally, I would say be very careful about adding any sort of direction because it can be a very slippery slope. If you add it once, you'll be inclined to do it again. Start directing and you'll turn off your readers and ...
5
It's extremely, extremely difficult.
Not too many people making movies. Lots of people writing screenplays. Gargantuan investment to get a movie made. Not an easy sell.
Now, it depends to a large extent on what kind of screenplay you're writing, and what kind of scope you're looking for. If you're aiming for a full-length Hollywood feature, then the odds ...
5
It's been a while since I've looked into comic scrips, but here's what I remember. There are a lot of differences between a script for a Movie/TV, a stage play and a comic. The biggest one is that in a comic there isn't a director (though the author or artist can fill that role depending on how you work together).
In a movie the majority of the camera work ...
5
Comic scripts usually include dialogue and location/background descriptions, maybe some directions for character placement. Movie scripts focus more on these details, and add elements of staging, camera placement and angles, and may have guidelines for post-production sound and visual effects. The biggest challenge is thinking of how to visualize how a scene ...
4
Yes, and Ralph Gallagher's answer identifies the pattern pretty well.
Why does it make for a popular show? I think it's because it gives audiences something familiar, something they can expect to see every week, while still allowing a lot of room for variety within that structure. Most stories adhere to some kind of structure, whether it's as rigid as the ...
4
How does one go about successfully getting their movie script, or screen play, into the right hands?
If there were a golden way, everyone would do it. They do not want that everyone does it.
You can use a literary agent. If they make a deal, they take around 15-20% of what Hollywood will pay you. Google them, google their reputation. Be aware of the indirection. You first have to convince the agent, the agent has to convince the Hollywood guys. And the ...
4
From what I can tell from some brief research, it is the same format as when writing a script for radio, or television. For example, from this article regarding Comedy Sketch Writing (written by Richard Herring, David Mitchell and Robert Webb):
I started my professional career
writing topical sketches for the now
defunct Radio 4 show Weekending. I
...
4
From what I know, though Im not an expert: The story or book must have been published, and seen some measure of commercial success, for the producer to have read it. If the producer likes your book, and thinks it can be turned into a movie, they will approach you and offer to buy the movie rights to your book- which means only they can make a movie from that ...
4
I get the impression that underneath this question is a question about ideal structure. That's too philosophical a topic so you have just presumed such a thing exists and based your question on that presumption. So to reword slightly: "Given the existence of an ideal plot structure and all that goes with it how do I, as a writer, take advantage of that to ...
4
Here's the money quote from the script formatting rules that cornbread ninja linked in the comments:
Some writers also use ALL CAPS when a sound effect appears in Action. Others capitalize important props. This would look like this:
MORTIMER groans and pops a handful of aspirin. The tea kettle WHISTLES. Mortimer pulls out a SUB-PARTICLE SUPER ...
4
The short answer is, yes, although there's no rule about it, studio readers do seem to start on page one.
Readers looking for scripts for their employers to film look for a lot of things: That there's a basic concept at work in the script, that the three-act structure is being followed... there's a list to be ticked off, and every studio will require their ...
3
I think it is a mistake to try to be all things to all readers. Most books focus on one specific genre, or maybe a combination of a couple of different loosely matched genres. That alone is going to alienate certain readers. If you try to throw in additional elements to try to appeal to readers who might not otherwise like the base genre, then all you will ...
3
I think I understand what you're trying to do - you're trying to get the audience to go 'uh-oh, Jake is going to be surprised once he gets to the end of the story', when we're following Jake throughout the story.
A couple of points from someone who is similarly struggling with writing (I.E. take any advice I give with a big lump of salt):
1) Don't feel ...
3
I’m not a screenwriter, but as far as I understand 'mid-point' your approach seems problematic to me.
Michael Hauge calls it point of no return, where the hero must fully commit to his goal. If he is not involved or even aware, he cannot make his decision.
Blake Snyder is talking about putting pressure on the protagonists to make their lives more ...
3
I would say start by reading some scripts. You need to see the style they have, and the best thing you can do (other than start writing yourself) is to read the work of successful writers. You can learn how to write good scenes, and, in the case of screenplays, you can watch the movie as well to see how it all looks once done.
The Daily Script is a great ...
3
Screenwriters don't specify shots or camera angles -- that's the job of the director and cinematographer. Since you know nothing about the actual production when you're writing the script, such information would be entirely hypothetical and largely useless.
As the screenwriter, you should specify the setting and time in the scene's slug line, using INT. or ...
3
Have you tried writing Kōans?
They are between one sentence and one paragraph long. Pure prose. No special prerequisites to writing them.
Try to write some great Kōans.
3
For a screenplay, it is probably more important to be clear than to have excellent, flowing prose. (I'm not a screenwriter.) For the more-general case of descriptive prose, however, one approach is to convert "they are" verbal clauses to adjectival clauses. Instead of:
Hundreds of people are standing and looking at the on-coming train. Their sweating ...
3
First, let us clarify: Is it
a publishable sceneplay to be read by readers, the creative choice of that format for storytelling, the final product to be "consumed" by your audience
or
a tool for director to create actual play or a movie, a step, ingredient to obtain the final product which will be the actual play?
There is a significant difference ...
2
I'm not sure if you're interested in writing in the "cloud" by using online browser based software, but if you are, here are some of the top free online solutions:
http://scripped.com/
http://www.scriptbuddy.com/
Google "Plotbot" (I'm limited to only two hyperlinks it seems)
The benefits of using online writing tools is that you won't lose your work to ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
