How To Learn Screenwriting In 4 Steps

read scripts write screenplays to watch a film get feedback read scripts write pages watch a lot of movies get feedback read/write watch movies get that feedback I basically learned by reading screenplays right just wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote it goes without saying that one needs to watch lots of movies get feedback you need to read scripts by professional screenwriters and see what they do and realize that we have a lot of latitude to tell the story the best way it means to be told reading scripts as apps critical particularly scripts written in the last five years because the style changes constantly and so people who tell you what you can't do this you can't do that much more important for you to read scripts of professional writers movie scripts where you are seeing how professionals approach the writing and you're then taking that knowledge and bringing it to bear on your own writing for me when people think they can write scripts without reading scripts it's like going to a classical concert and listening to a piece of classical music and thinking oh I love this music I'm gonna go home and write some music now and just writing music randomly with dots and squiggles because you know these dots and squiggles and lines and just kind of writing some sort of a document that's you think looks like sheet music and then handing it over to someone and expecting them to play they're not gonna understand and it's like an architect going and if you see a beautiful building and you think oh this buildings really beautiful I love this building and I like buildings and I understand buildings and I like Art Deco style I'm gonna go home and design a building and you just kind of design the building without having looked at blueprints or read sheet music that's why you've got to read scripts and movie is not a script it's a it's a different thing they serve different kind of functions almost be different don't just because you read a book on screenwriting don't follow an exact format read screenplays read every screenplay you can from amateur you're professional look movies you've watched get those screenplays especially sites like I don't even know who still exists for like guru script or AMA or anywhere that the houses screenplays are especially if you live in LA there's stores sell them I try to get early drafts of scripts and understand the changes that they made to production I think the more you read and see the evolution of how writing is changing over the years how character development and dialogue and just all the different I think it's about looking at all the different because you know there isn't one set format for writing a screenplay there used to be it's not so much anymore but I think the more you you read you just filter through this works for what I'm doing this doesn't work but you see the way that people use description it's just practice I think one of the best tips is it was I I heard a female shell runner say when she came out to LA she spent the first year reading every single pilot that had been picked up that she could get her hands on and that could and also maybe reading pilots of series from a couple years ago I do feel that's when I certainly Shakespeare for me was one of my best teachers just understanding how well-defined his characters were the dialogue and the conflicts and they you know the characters needs and wants and what gets in their way and I mean it the stakes you don't get bigger than Shakespeare with Macbeth or Hamlet and so there are great teachers and great like Matthew one or we you can watch Mad Men absolutely you know you can watch a lot of series but there is something about seeing the written work the fastest way of learning screenwriting is very easy read scripts that simple so people who write novels very often just sit down in their computer and they start writing but chances are they've read lots of novels in their lives almost certainly so there's this famous saying you know if you want to know how to write you just read read read and write write write so script writing is exactly the same read lots of scripts what I find really strange is participants of my workshops and people who come to my talks and stuff I'm like how many of you have read a feature film script and like out of the 40 people maybe society can thing but not many people have read the features on trip but they want to write movies because they've watched lots of movies so they think because they're a movie fan and they like to watch movies that they can write scripts and I'm like but you've never seen this document of a script properly you may have read you know transcriptions of scriptures you never looked at the formatting and the layout and the style and the structure and all this kind of thing so I would say just read as men scripts as you can and they're all available online you know they are websites where you can get them and just because I mean I think that's how we learn it's just from reading and I mean if you read many many feature film scripts then you'll end up writing future that's the for me that's the fast track to writing good scripts is reading lots of scripts and they're there it's available you can read the screen writing books on how to write scripts but really if you just read the scripts lots of them and keep up to date with what's happening in the trends of the writing styles and how things are changing through the years so you know don't just read Casablanca and Chinatown because there are certain formatting at a certain time read current scripts as well interested in TV series read TV series scripts because they're also written in a different style and then you start to see the writers voice and then perhaps from that you can start writing your own voice so I would say the fast track is just read loads of scripts then of course write the scripts I guess I've learned through my directing and producing that experience breeds experience and that's what pushed me forward so it was the same with my writing I wasn't reading books I was just writing in what reading I was doing was other people's work what's working for them what are they doing that I'm not doing in my scripts and I would never try to emulate their voice because every great script writer you can read it you could almost go I know who wrote this would never try to emulate that but I would just from a broad stroke standpoint look and go what are they doing that's so great you know you do obviously the best script screenplays I've ever read as I'm reading it I visualized the movie I don't even think about the writing it just pulls you in to such a degree that before you know it you've gone through it and you've been perfectly visualizing the film and you don't feel yourself turning the pages you don't feel yourself reading the paragraphs how do I get to that point so I would read these guys and read him and read him and just try to make my own writing better and I'm still doing that to this day always trying to push myself to me better I read a Syd field book when I started out and I had read it and I liked some of what he had to say and I read how did be over whatever some book you know for dummies or something had to be screenplay that that didn't do anything for me once in a while these books work when they tell you things to avoid I think those when you when you get asked when you go to the store you're gonna see 75 books that say how to be a screenwriter I would say the most valuable aspect of those books are are often the parts where they tell you to avoid things they say stay away from you know because there are cliches there are a lot of them and when people in the film industry read those cliches over and over again you know they it has an effect on them my I got my experience from reading my favorite movies or my favorite screenplays so I and I remember when I opened up Sid fields book I think his first one he was talking about Chinatown and he's talking about how he thinks it might be one of the that's or the best screenplay of the 1970s he said and I had just at that time gotten into Chinatown I'd watched her like eight times in a row I was you know whatever I was 18 years old I had just really discovered it and I loved it it's what made me want to be a screenwriter and then to see him say that in his prologue I was like oh okay okay now I want to be on this guy's and I read Chinatown I read I remember I read a Shawshank Redemption and American Beauty and well I wanted to read American Beauty because a lot maybe people don't know this but it has a whole different ending in the movie you know I wanted to read the shooting screenplays and see how different they were from the the the actual movie I read I got a lot of information I felt from him from a script from the screenplay for the People vs Larry Flynt reason being that was based on a true story obviously Larry Flynt I think had eight wives and in the movie there's just Courtney Love and that was just a revelation to me you know that you can in order to make a movie work in a certain time period here's how you can cheat the numbers and still be mostly true that was obviously a big cheat but the People vs Larry Flynt a member of and Shawshank were big ones for me for learning a lot about the the formatting of the script and you know how much action and how little action you need when you when you're at your heading and things like that the formatting is very important you know the aesthetic is very important and I basically learned by reading screenplays we had the first semester we had three classes we had an introduction to screenplay analysis and that was with Professor Edson and that was the beginning of his sort of explanation of screenplay structure we didn't actually write in that class but that first class was sort of like a top-level introduction to the terms that he would be using kind of a general overview of what the structure paradigm is and then sort of an assignment where we had to watch a film and then break down the first act of that film of what happens in every single scene and so that sort of built on two more things that we would learn later where we would do breakdowns of entire scripts of entire films but that first class was just sort of an introduction of terms and a basic overview of what the structure was this is where one area I feel pretty confident that I understand pretty well I used to teach a class called the history of American screenwriting which was created by my colleague down at the University of North Carolina Dana Cohen and I taught that class I think four times and it was really a brilliant class because it would go decade by decade starting with like in the 1890s every week was like a different decade 1900s and 1910s 1920s and so you're studying the evolution of screen writing and filmmaking particularly in the United States and the role of the screenwriter in the process particularly in Hollywood one of the things that we did in that class was we looked at screenplay structure and format and style as it evolved over time in fact the term screenplay didn't really come into existence until the 30s and 40s before then it was known well it's basically just a shot list and then it became known as a continuity during the silent film era but then what's talkies came along then they started bringing in Hollywood started to bring all these playwrights did the dialogue right and so then it became a screen play two words so if you look at movies from the 30s and even into the 40s you'll oftentimes see that credit being screen play as a screen version of a play so then eventually screen place kind of became a little bit more of their own thing and we joined them together a screenplay so I've studied this quite you know comprehensively and I know for a fact that it's always evolving so that's always cracked me up when people say well you can't do this or you have to do that it's always evolving it's constantly evolving so for example if you look at if you look at scripts from there were no things as selling scripts or spec scripts back in the 40s and 50s and 60s it was all for hire all 40s and 50s thirties forties and fifties and so is all all these things were filled with shots you know close-up zoom and all that stuff what happened what's the spec script the market evolved was director said we don't want it we don't want you to tell us how to direct the movie we're directors we're going to do that so then we pulled out that journalist peeking we pulled out that camera jargon and directing lingo and so that led to the whole we see we move we hear and then that started to get a bit tiresome and so then what we started to do was just just describe what's happening and so then when I first broke in was like okay so every paragraph you should try to have no more than five lines as opposed to like these big blocks of 15 20 30 lines because it's much easier to read script readers are in effect the threshold Guardians of Hollywood and we try to make it as easy for them to read as possible nowadays I think that you know the general feeling and this is not a rule but the general feeling is that the paragraph should be no longer than three lines but a better way to think about it does not like that sort of regimented thing I think the better way to think about it is each line of scene description each paragraph of scene description that's a way of indicating a camera shot you're not saying it's a camera shot but if you think about the scene as you're writing it and you're thinking okay that's a close-up I see that is it close-up and I see this as a as a wide shot and I see this is a medium shot now you're not saying that in the script but you're breaking up each paragraph to suggest that that's a camera shot that's a great way to not only direct the action on the page but also ensure that your paragraphs aren't that long you're breaking them up into one two or three lines so scripts today this is why it's important yeah it's great to read the older scripts but it's really important to read the scripts that come out nowadays because the styles are constantly changing we're seeing something happening right now and I don't know if it's gonna continue to go this way but including images and scripts like if you read the script that Brian woods and Scott Beck did for a quiet place it has an image of their Monopoly board it's got an image comparing like the Statue of Liberty and I think the Eiffel Tower and then this big Tower that's out in the field they're just so you get a sense of it they change font sizes they use one page is like a word on it or even a letter you know um so it's much more visually graphic and I guess it makes sense because movies are primarily a visual medium some people may resist that as being kind of a cheat but we're starting to see some of that now and I don't think that's necessarily wrong it could be that we eventually that's what screenplays become they do include images and you could certainly make an argument that why not because again it's a it's a visual medium so it's constantly in a state of change which is why if anybody tells you you can't do this or you have to do that then then you know you're not talking to the right people you need to read scripts by professional screenwriters and see what they do and realize that we have a lot of latitude to tell the story the best way it needs to be told my first trip that I ever wrote does not exist anymore anyway in this world I hope there's no digital copy of it it was terrible it probably had a lot of formatting errors it was it was just you know wasn't terrible it was just misguided youth enthusiasm of youth so you've gotta write quite a lot to get that's the Vario system i think you know you get the genius writer you may write a full script and it's like fantastic but i'd say write a few times and see how it works get feedback as well from people who are not your mother or your best friend and and then rewrites that script and then you'll start to get somewhere yeah it's I suppose that's the fast track to you to writing I had an English teacher mr. Pomeroy in tenth grade back at Penn Wood inland Salem Pennsylvania and he said people always say you become a better writer by reading and he said that's not true you become a better writer by writing and he would say that was every day into his class you say right that will be his first word when we got into the room and we were right and there it was the most amazing class it was AP class and it was either you got an A or an F oh wow there was no grading of the papers nothing it was either you did the work you tried you got a a you didn't do the work you're not trying to eat us so everyone in that class they wrote and we grew leaps and bounds without boundaries it wasn't like Oh My giddy a beer it was just writing and that that was very freeing and I think that kind of gave me the mindset that I have now where if I want to be a better writer I need to write if I want to be a better whatever I need to do it so I applied that thing that he told me I think of him very finely very often because he encouraged me in a way that was invaluable just to write and that it was good and that I could impact people with it I never went to any master programs I never went to any film programs that specifically taught me my craft as I'd mentioned Cu was more about film theory and various things like that it didn't really teach me in great depth what you need to do as a director or writer I had to learn all that on my own whether I did it right or wrong who's to say but for me is that I alluded to before I just wrote and in wrote and wrote and through all that riding through all those years you start to find your own voice and when I wasn't writing I was reading again great scripts different kinds of scripts the more type of scripts the better in different styles you know you never want to get attached to one person's style that he might start to emulate it I mean read different styles and go gosh this is amazing I never thought you could do it this way and what I eventually earned learned through the years is is when I'm writing my scripts I don't just want to write a scene or write a story I bring literally the words the structure of the sentences themselves to life I break things apart short descriptions certain ways I'd do it depending on the project it should be an experience to read it and it should be something that literally pulls the reader from one page to the next where they can't stop if your script doesn't hook the reader on the first page you're done that's just the reality is a lot of agents and managers will joke well I'll give you the old five page rule it was the rule of thumb some say ten but that means I'll read the first five pages and if it doesn't have me I don't read the rest because these guys are reading hundreds of scripts a week they don't got time and they've got a good radar they know it gets it in my personal opinion I think they give it half a page or page if your script just isn't really good both from a grammatical structural story standpoint whatever it is immediately you're not going to gain any traction with them so that's the goal as a writer as you keep writing and when I was teaching myself to write I aspired to get to that point I want to pull them in from the first sentence and never let them go and how to achieve that in a variety of different genres and you know whatever your story is about was a challenge and you just keep working on it until you get it we had a class called the short screenplay and that was a class where we needed to write a 30 to 45 page script that could be anything it could be a TV pilot could be a beginning of a feature it could be a webseries pretty much whatever we wanted but that was taught by another professor his name is Jared Rappaport a much more freer sort of experience he's a very he's loved him so much he's such a great professor he he's definitely the opposite of professor Edson and that he's very free-flowing and he's very you know follow your muse and follow your inspiration and stuff like that and every bit the successful screenwriter that that professor Henson was but we started that first class with some guided meditation oh cool if that's any guys what that white said and it was just sort of us talking about ideas and sort of tapping into the things that make us want to be writers and the stories that we want to tell so it was much more sort of an individualistic class and figuring out what it is that you want to say so that's what that was it was a you know a couple exercises and in figuring out what are the the conflicts that you're most interested in what are the types of people that you're most interested in and then based on that you sort of figure out and you sort of back into a writing project that will help you explore that so for some of us like I ended up writing a spec script for an HBO show called room 104 that that dealt with a dysfunctional family because that's that's kind of the thing that I'm really interested in other students wrote the beginnings of features like the first acts of features that sort of stuff but there were all different types of projects there I'd asked them if they had an idea and then I would just say pull out your laptop or your notebook with your pen and start writing it I wouldn't I wouldn't even tell them about format I would just be like described a movie everybody knows what a movie is everybody knows everybody's seen it they're like our visual vocabulary is so high especially now 2018-2019 I mean you know anybody can describe it that the problem is we still when we start educating people were like read six both of these six let's take this course do this stuff watch this video you know it gets like but not this video yeah yeah no I mean you can watch this video but that's what I would do if somebody was like I want to write a movie and I don't know anything about it I'd be like what do you want to write about like what's your idea and they probably have the idea they're not like well I don't know what the idea is though they're gonna be like well actually I want to write off this guy who wants to do this thing and I'd be like okay start describing it just describe it and then I might say something like Trudeau don't talk up don't describe their thoughts and don't describe their feelings any character don't describe the insides just describe what you would see on a movie screen you know it's just like and you know exterior house day man walks across and gets in the car drives away you know do not care about doing anything wrong just spill your guts just tell us the movie write down the whole movie we'll figure all that other stuff later you can figure out where things are supposed to be later you can figure out everything I mean you know there's so many stories about that where they didn't know what they were doing you know they wrote bridesmaids that way they didn't know like they brought they bought screenwriting for dummies or something like that right so it's like that fresh voice it's like ah it breaks my heart thinking about all the people that have that think they have because we've created this industry where it's all coded and they got to go take oh you got to learn you have to learn structure you have to learn this you've got to learn all these things you know I don't know what a screenplay is man you got to know what the rules are before you break them that's all crap to sell books and all sorts of stuff it doesn't it's it we God please bring them in that don't know anything about movies and maybe we'll have better movies I mean that's the problem it's like it's like all this other stuff it's like bringing that person it's just like I have as a teacher I have had people come in with formatting that's just like doesn't ah they don't know what they don't have access the final trap I don't know what they're writing and it's the most authentic slice-of-life funny succinct observational genius stuff and then on and if the reason why it exists is because they haven't learned anything about screenwriting yet and then once you start teaching them then all of a sudden they they don't know what they're doing then they don't then they lose their emotional connection they lose that story four-year-olds know how to tell a story they know how to tell a story ask a five-year-old what happened today at school well we went in beginning middle and end the inciting incident you can tape it you can go exciting that's it so you guys should film curse do should interview a friggin ten-year-old and then put the little flags in and be like wow they know all the structure already so I don't have to go to so-and-so person's course or I don't have to take Gordy's class or anything you know you don't have to spend any money and keep your voice that's the most important thing I was at it's like don't lose your voice don't lose your instincts your childlike instincts for telling stories it's like that's what guides us and I always go back to that I'm like I don't care the thing I just wrote for somebody that we're all likelihood people are watching this video we'll see I don't know what the structure is I don't know where the act breaks are at it and it's over a hundred and fifty pages okay it was a writer I mean and it's probably gonna be seen by people watching this video directed by a very very good top director this is going to happen and I have no idea what the structure of that is I literally just took my ideas plotted out the thing now am i following the rules of character and emotional engagement to like develop and everything things you can reflect back on and be like how do I make this better but when you're telling me when somebody's like what's the five minute version of like somebody wants to write a movie that's they watch this video what I just sit without saying that one needs to watch lots of movies for television and BC you know steeped in that world yeah and I that's a good point you just made watch and watch a lot of movies watch some good movies you can learn a lot from that what some people will do is you know writing is seeing a lot of dialogue can be tricky because once you film it you go boy this is so it's just what your talking heads this is so dialogue heavy watch a great scene between two characters talking in a movie and then write it down most the time not all the time go there and store it might be a different choice or a different circumstance but with most writers once you write down the dialogue from one of your favorite movies you'll see it's a lot shorter than you think these guys know what they're doing they know how to write something that that doesn't turn into a five page monologue watch a lot of movies watch them and learn from them and then again keep reading skirt reading lots of different screenplays I don't think I ever learned to write screenplays or stage plays I think I learned what was in a story that connected with people and then figured out how to put that into lines and I think that's really what it is people go to school and they read these books they're trying to just find out what a story is and then how to relay it but I think consuming all types of content really is a thing that can teach you that in such a way cuz it's like okay I watch movies I go to the movies multiple times a week it's I don't watch TV but I go to movies all the time but I'm watching the audience to like what was a moment where they kind of leaned back and kind of soul in or what was the moment that they reacted to it well or kind of seemed a little disconnecting out on their phones or whatever so yeah stories connect with people and if you know how to connect with people outside of a writing you can tell a story and that's everybody so everyone has some level of connection to people so they can translate that to a paper than your writer and I have learned to do that by doing it doing it and hearing it and reading it and seeing it so reading scripts helps yes but you got to see the outcome of that scare so go watch the movie and you have to see the reaction that the movie had on the people so go to the movies and you become a better writer the other thing as an exercise and I think this is a very powerful exercise it might not seem like fun but be fun is to watch if you're I did this actually when I was in my 20s starting out officer and a gentleman and this is before you could download scripts on the internet I did I watched the whole movie and I wrote down as I was watching it what each scene was so I had to pause a lot but it what it does is it really helps you understand and get a feel for rhythm and structure almost through osmosis through that process of doing it and the point of doing it isn't so you can go and you're not plagiarizing or copying it's to get you to you just understand rhythms of scenes and how they flow from one to the next and what you and you you can see when you're doing it okay whereas what's the act one the act one break usually it's supposed to be around page 27 in a feature so you see where that kind of flows when you're copying you know a script and if you don't have to do every single line baby okay Richard Richard Gere's with his father they wake up right after they've had an evening of debauchery and hookers and Richard Gere is now off to to training camp in the military then the next scene and I don't remember exactly but let's say the next scene is he's on a bus and we see exterior the the facility then next scene maybe we see Debra Winger as a waitress I don't remember everything so forgive me but it also gets you into the understanding and the that screenwriter is a wonderful screenwriter the it gets you and to seeing how when I was talking about not including the dull bits you can see beautiful juxtapositions like he's off to the military and then maybe the next thing he's in line and being asked to salute and it's just it's a wonderful exercise that this woman who has became a successful writer in television she read pilot so if you feel like your want to be a half-hour person and if you want to do multicam and you feel like NBC CBS ABC Stealth's that comes or your thing which are multicam versus single camera which is more like Aziz Ansari and the marvelous missus Mazal master of none then get those scripts read them see how they introduce the characters see how distinct all the voices are they're so distinct and these will be some of your best teachers your first draft is not perfect I mean unless you're the next you know Robert Robert Towne or you know somebody somebody who's got just this amazing ability to kevin smith with clerks even my baby that was his first draft like just because you finished it and it was really difficult doesn't mean it's perfect so get feedback stage table reads listen to the advice that people give you even if you don't like it you're always gonna fight for some things you don't have to take everyone's advice you will never not learn something you didn't think of or didn't see as being a problem in your script the more people you ask to give their feedback in their input now of course sometimes you want to do something weird and wild that people want to understand and that's okay you don't have to change it but you have to rewrite and rewrite and rewrite get that feedback this is so important to shape there's no way that any one writer can have all the answers and bang out a perfect screenplay with them that guidance and help pick who you share it with wisely and pick the time that you share it and the reason why you're sharing it and what you're looking for from sharing it and what you tell them you're looking for when you share it but even if you do all those things other people are out of our control and they might come back to you with opinions and reactions that are very you know unhelpful to you or emotionally discouraging or devastating to you and you may not be able to avoid that I mean you can certainly work on handling your own reactions but you can't control what they're gonna say much as you might try but if you're conscious about all those things and sort of being targeted in who you're sharing and why and all those things and also noticing that they may say things I don't like and I don't have to let it destroy my opinion about whatever I'm writing however I am open I'm doing it because I'm open to hearing other opinions and I want to have a sense of how others are reacting to it any one person is not enough though it's probably you need a consensus of people and people who know something about what you're trying to do people that understand the craft are a more valuable opinion than just kind of friends or even other aspiring writers may not be as valuable of an opinion to you so you always have to take what others say with somewhat of a grain of salt I think while being open to if I get a lot of the same opinion maybe there's something worth looking at there I think it's a lot of it is you have to be like a detective who's interested in knowing what are the things that aren't working for people and then I'll figure out why and I'll figure out how to solve them if they say you should do this other thing instead don't listen to that don't try to do there fixes but listen to what their issues are which they may not even be articulating because people try to be helpful and tell you what if you did this instead what you really want to know is why do you not like what I did do and people sometimes don't want to say it because it's too hurtful like I was bored I didn't care stuff like that or they may not even know how to articulate it they just might know I didn't like it you know it isn't helpful which is why we try to codify some of these things of what makes someone like or not like something right so we can learn from that so I think it's um you know trusting that your own voice has value and that you will find your way to address whatever problems you decide you agree our problems takes the power away from the other random subjective people who are gonna say whatever it is they're gonna say yeah I'm very careful and selective about when I share stuff and who I share it with because I know I'll have a tendency to get very upset depending on what people say and sometimes it can threaten to derail me from whatever it is I'm trying to do or thinking there's any value in it so I've really learned to be to really be careful and to do it with the right people at the right times for the right reasons at the right times interesting the right times in the process cuz sometimes you're ready it really helps if you've moved on to another project and you're not even thinking about this one anymore to then show it to people because then if they don't like it as much you already have this other one that you're now interested in so I'm a big believer in putting one down maybe not even show it to anyone right away work on something else come back to the first one and you'll have new perspective and you'll see things you want to change so you make your own change you never had to show it to anyone at that point right but eventually when you do show it maybe have a couple other things that you're working on so that that one script isn't your whole world anymore right because when you're in the middle of it it's your baby and you better not have your baby get abused by other people right so it helps to get that distance from it and a lot of it is you get your own distance from it you'll be able to give yourself notes that you couldn't do when you were in the middle of it yeah it's another thing I got from the war of already talked Steven Pressfield somewhere I I noticed him saying he would like finish a project every six months I said to myself a while back I'm gonna write two scripts a year to the point where I feel they're they're kind of finished they've gone through multiple drafts of my own notes maybe no one else's notes have yet come into play but they've really been rewritten significantly based on my own notes and the way I get there is by taking a pause moving away coming back a couple months later to like finish one but always have multiple scripts in the hopper so some are done some are semi done so I'm you've just started and so it becomes a little more of a factory as opposed do I have this one project I've been working on for three years and it's all I ever think about everyday and if someone doesn't like it I'm devastated you know that is not the most helpful way to go and I've done that here's something that I would advise any screenwriter to do he's starting out you have a screenplay don't send the PDF to a person and ask him to read it it's just you're never gonna get anything like that but you have to do is you have to make it a special thing you have to say what we did was we took ten friends some in the industry some not in the industry wouldn't know many people in the industry but you know friends who we trusted him thought they were smart and we said we have a hard copy of the screenplay we'd like you to come over to we had an office that he wouldn't let my co-writer is working for someone in office in Manhattan we would like you come over the office if you wouldn't mind we're not gonna stand over you like you know a funny farm and like you know watch you read the pages or whatever but we'd like you to read it and we'll walk away we'll be gone for a couple hours you can write notes whatever you can bash it we don't care we just want like ten different people's point of view so that's what we did we we had ten people read it like they couldn't leave with it they couldn't take it we didn't you know we know they're gonna read it you know and and we're not gonna stand over their shoulder we like left the office came back and then we sit down with them and we just talk it out with them we took all their notes we decided what we what we were feeling and and we're the sort of the consensus notes were and then we went right back into it and and two weeks later we had like a script that we were able to we felt could perhaps be given to people to of note think about it in terms of being on the other side of the coin if your friend sends a PDF a hundred page PDF of you of something and maybe by the way you're not a screenwriter you're like their friend and you don't really read screenplays a lot it's a seam it's a daunting task it's a task that you know I don't have to explain it you could be excited about reading a screenplay that comes into your inbox but generally speaking in the work the age we live in with emails and social media and all these things going on for people to get distracted by to read your friend or your cousin's your second cousin your friends brothers uncles screenplay or whatever you know we felt that no one's gonna read our script if we just send them a PDF of it we felt let's just set a time from the read it not like be huh not be in the room when they read it but that way they'll read it and then right after they read it we get their fresh unfiltered you know mmm like feelings about the screenplay and then if we see things from like that if six out of the ten of them are saying this is no good well then you know we know that's something we got to work on one of my students from our line is now a very very successful TV show runner and soon to be directing a movie that she wrote and I had her that's Lisa joy she is co-executive producer Westworld and she came to a class that I taught it in Westwood for a weekend seminar and that question they posed that question to her and she said well I was working as a lawyer and and before that was going to law school and the way I approached it was I'm going to act like I am a professional screenwriter I'm going to approach this like a job and so obviously you know how do you do that in terms of hours but set that aside that's the mentality to have and you have to really immerse yourself in it and it's not just about writing the script it's about learning the craft and so one of those things that I came up with years ago from my blog which is watch movies read script write pages those three things are absolutely essential you've got to watch movies sometimes you just kind of kick back and enjoy it but then there are other times you stop it scene by scene and you write a scene by scene breakdown and you're looking for where the plot line points land the major events that twist the plot in a new direction you're looking at subplots and those little many stories and my anti stories and how they play into the to the a story you're looking at characters in terms of the transformation of art so there's watching movies and sometimes you do it in a very rigorous fashion then reading scripts Simoni you could just sit there and just kind of blow through a script and enjoy it but then you can also do a same thing you can do a scene by scene breakdown you're doing the same sort of analysis that you would if you're watching a movie and then of course writing pages and you know I have this thing I came up with my blog that seems to be quite popular which is one two seven fourteen one is read one script per week two is watch two movies per week seven is write one page a day seven pages and 14 is 14 hours a week you should be basically two hours a day you are researching another project you're rewriting a project you're doing character development you're doing story development you're generating and assessing story ideas you're tracking trends you're reading the trades you know if you want to do this if you really want to do this you have to understand that you were competing against people who are very serious minded and have a lot of talent it's not easy in fact the odds against success are just enormous but the way to do it is to approach it like you're a professional and so if you can carve out 20 hours a week let's say 16 hours a week you know 2 hours a day you know as opposed to going in eating lunch you know with the buddies for an hour and a half well use that time to actually do some work as a writer you know you need to learn the craft and then exhibit what you've learned on the page so that when you've written that script it speaks to someone you know someone will get it and see that this is a professional writer but you should definitely then start trying to figure out what all the rest of those elements are so figuring out what the world is knowing what the tone is a lot of people mean I think about tone but tone matters tone is that that that that that feeling that makes this different from slapstick comedy regular comedy romantic comedy into kind of a comedic drama that is now more regular drama family drama that ends up now this gritty thriller thing so it's kind of like the the nuance between the genres right like what that tone is and then knowing who your characters are knowing who's gonna go on this journey figuring out why we should care about them figuring out how we're gonna relate to them and relating to them doesn't have to mean liking them we just have to relate then knowing what goal they're after because anything that's on TV anything that's on anything that's a feature is about a character reaching a goal that's why we're here we don't want to just see people go through their day-to-day lives right we want to see like their act or something or something's after then you know whatever it is but they have a goal figuring out what the stakes are the stakes are gonna be the why why am I here why do I care what's what's going on what are they gonna win where because if not then why do I care if they reach the goal if they don't if there's nothing at stake for them then I am gonna be that much less invested and people usually know what the end is people usually kind of know what the setup is and they kind of know what the resolution is right it's the second act where everyone kind of falls apart and it's because we really don't start acting our quick asking ourselves how how are they gonna get from A to B so I personally feel like everyone should write an outline they're gonna be writers who are reading this like ha I've never written an outline and I've done great that's great you might have that special skill you know you also might be a person who doesn't mind rewriting 15 times because no matter what you're gonna rewrite right I think by writing the outline and cut down the number of rewrites because your first draft isn't as terrible because you've actually plotted out what it is you're going to do so you didn't just start at the blank page and start writing and just like you know oh well maybe they'll go this way maybe they go that way because as soon as you change one thing what does it do changes everything else there's a domino effect if you're doing that in outline form for some people that's putting it on cards some people that's putting it on a whiteboard you know now you just erase that one little part and write it write it back or you move your your cards around because you realize this scene could probably be best there and it heightens the stakes if we make this thing happen here I do mine on a word document and I put the actual scene heading on top and then whatever is happening in that scene so I can copy and paste that whole little thing all over the place if I want to so it's easier to kind of see your story on paper and move it around as much as you'd like before it gets into script format then it becomes a little harder to do that so if you have an outline and you really understand how does this person get from A to C what happens during B what do they physically do so I'm always asking how and so people will then answer that with with a general answer and I'll go no I want to know what the characters physically doing like what am i watching them do you can say well they're saving the world how are they saving the world by going to Starbucks are they saving the world by having to go confront a bad guy yes they have to confront the bad guy how how did they find him where was he was he just down the street you know in another country he's in another country how do they get there you know do they take a bus do they take a train do they have to fly do they swim you know like all of these little details about how we actually get from A to C are the things that people don't think about until they're on the page and then they're stuck and they stop and they're like I can't get past this part and it's like yeah because you didn't think about that part until you got here but if you took some time to figure it out before you get to the writing part now the writing is fun cuz you got your note so you're like okay this is what's supposed to be happening right now okay I get it and now it can happen a little more clean than it would have if you just went straight to the page and so now maybe instead of doing five rewrites you only have to do two so I teach a whole class called no writer's block and that's what we do we learn screenplay structure and by the end of it you have an outline so that you can go write whatever it is you want to write also because you're learning screenplay structure now you can outline anything now you know the structure of anything so it's not just oh well I figured the outline out for this idea now what it's like no any idea can fall straight into that same place so that you feel more confident because that's the other that's the where writer's block comes from is that you just you're not confident in what you're doing but if you have a plan already right it's like we were talking about earlier if I already printed out my directions or if I have my Google Maps on my phone then I know where I'm going I say yes I can't this is not a good example I was gonna say I could say I want to drive to Louisiana but if I don't look it up I can't get there I happen to know where Louisiana is from here so I could probably get there but there are other people who are like who would have no idea that they can get on i-10 and get all the way to Louisiana so people might not know that but so they would need to have those directions if you don't have those directions now you're veering you know left and now you've taken a wrong turn and now you've done XY and Z and you've wasted however many hours trying to get there where you could add a straight shot it could just had the directions so to me that's what an outline is it's your Google Maps so that you know where you're going so I think beginning writers should definitely start in that place we'll start by learning structure right start by understanding what elements it takes to have a story and then outline every writer has to find their own process so outlines don't work for everybody beat sheets don't work for everybody treatments don't work for everybody you have to figure out what works well for you because I'm always thinking about what's efficient and effective for me most of the time because if I'm writing a short I only need to know the big beans right I don't have to outline the whole thing you know if I'm writing a feature I need to outline the whole thing is I don't I don't want to get stuck in the screenplay part that's frustrating for me in my process but if that's the part of the process that you enjoy you can do it that way I don't I don't tell people that it's like a must but I do tell people especially people who are learning or people who aren't learning but they've been writing for a while and they're trying to make it more efficient you know so it's like no I've never outlined before but I always end up getting there it's like yeah but do you get there in a year because you might be able to get there in three months you know maybe depending upon wheels you have going on in your life you know so definitely people don't have to do it that way I think you have to figure out what your process is and and make sure that that process is efficient for you again if you're trying to be a professional writer because you're trying that means you're trying to write more than one thing a year maybe sell more than one thing a year you can't do that if everything that you write takes you know 15 drafts in two years to write so you want to look for something that's more efficient and for me writing the outline is just more efficient and then to make it really good tap into what only you can bring into the script so it's all very well reading loads of scripts and writing loads of scripts if you're gonna write another crime thriller or you know something that someone else can do better what can you write what's the only in the story that only you can roll the stories and you can write all the themes that only you can write if you can tap into that then you are really putting something in there that is authentic and it'll read people will recognize it when they read it immediately so I did a lot of script reading in the past and for competitions and I've read too many scripts I yeah for my own sanity but when you're reading them you you suddenly something just leaps off the page and that's an authenticity it's a moment of realness a real character moment a real moment of subtlety a real location a real something that just leaps off the page if you can put that in your scripts and I really believe that you'll have an advantage over of out the script so yeah read lots of scripts and write the kinda scripts and you can write I think the the freedom my teacher gave me in writing could never be taken away the reason I said the next year 11th grade I had the most the teacher it's like you have to do it this way there's no way you wrote this in right now like she would have us do these journal entries and she's like oh no you didn't just write this and I'm like that's that's how my thoughts come out and she's like okay it was just like a very negative space but I didn't lose what he gave me I just like well let me see how I can better interact with this woman that wants me to do this and this and this but I knew that I already achieved it and I had already experienced it so that exponential learning I kept with me through that moment and beyond so I still feel a sense of freedom I think for me sometimes I feel there's so much the producer does and we get so boggle down with tasks so if I could just take a moment just to write some things down so totally disconnected from work I was so better and I think that's something that he taught us like you can free yourself because you're getting your thoughts out you're getting your thoughts organized even for anyone not just writers so anyone that wants to kind of just bring himself back to center writing is a great way to do it so that freedom yes he he established it and it just definitely continued on and continues on today and I try to give that to other people as well so don't before I tell them what not to do like just go and that's an anything like my wardrobe designer my set designer like no just Express go like to spend a day with it don't try to do it the way that fits into this just go for a day and then some beautiful things could come out that might have been kind of pushed down by too much of a structure in a bad moment you need the structure because then I need to come and make sure you're productive and all these things but let them go first and then you'll be surprised at how many beautiful things come out and then third class was the one-hour drama class and that was taught by a woman Lawrence Walsh Hudson she was a story editor on CSI Miami and she worked on a number of other shows as TV writer and that was sort of us coming up with the show that we wanted to write a spec for so anyone our show we could write for and it was us just sort of talking about the different types of one-hour shows the different genres you know serialized shows versus you know kind of case of the week shows and really just sort of that first class was sort of boiling down what we had wanted to tackle for the semester and just sort of talking about life and the writers room and stuff like that so that was fun I ended up picking Black Mirror as a show that I wanted to write a spec for because there's a structure to it but every episode is unique and not really connected to the others so I was kind of cheating I wanted to write a story as a feature so I thought if I did it as a black mirror spec that would work so yeah those were the the first three classes that week it was that first week wasn't that stressful because as all semesters you have sort of a beginning and intro before you really get into the work and the real meat of the semester but it was a great sort of you know first step into you know what would be two years of studying writing probably the most important perspective has been to see it as something I'm always learning and I'm always growing and that's okay it's not like I'm supposed to know it all and be perfect at it and the things that I write are gonna just be great automatically and others are gonna love them to see it more as it's an ongoing quest of kind of a self development self education I'm learning with everything that I write what works better and and and not as good so that it's like it's like this this journey of development that you sort of like are gonna enjoy the journey as opposed to I have to get to a certain place which it's easy to feel that way because the world works that way where I have to get the agent I have to get the sail I have to get something produced I have to raise the money and make my movie there's all these goals we might have in the world and a lot of times they're out of our control and if you focus only on those goals like what I can get what I can achieve instead of what can i express how can I just do what I decide I want to do which is be a writer and be learning and growing and find some satisfaction in that journey because when you turn it into there have to be these quantifiable results in terms of money or others reactions or whatever then you're putting all your power in this thing that may or may not ever happen that you can't for sure make happen no matter what you do so I think that attitude it might seem counterproductive because it's like well to be successful you want to you know professional you want to focus on the professional goals right well you you do to some extent and you are open to feedback and you are listen you know you are educating yourself I didn't say just go in a hole and just do what you want to do and never and shut the outside world out I'm saying engage with the world with feedback with education with trying to understand and get better so it's growth but making it a positive growth for yourself that is about making me better and making my writing better not making my results better because when you focus on how do I give more how do I write something that's really going to impact people more how do I do that how do I figure out how to do it how do I get better at it you're then about giving to other people and you will achieve success I believe more when you succeed at giving more you will get more automatically as opposed to how do I get the success how do I get the breaks how do I get the right person to read it how do I get people to like it it's more how do I create something so wonderful that people will just automatically like it I'm not even concerning myself with that so it's like taking the power into your own hands and being about how you can improve your stuff and yourself as a writer having that approach I think is a is a stronger healthier approach that's gonna lead to success more than if you do it the other way it's like an everyday practice that thing again right an everyday practice of being about I'm just about the purity of expression and growth and learning and improving as opposed to the how do I get the result that I want from others it's because we don't naturally do it that way we have to sort of like decide that's how I'm going to approach this instead I do think it really is about making the daily practice journey writing whatever enjoyable being at peace enjoying what you're doing each day finding a way to make it that way so that the journey is a positive journey and not be so caught up in the destination because if you enjoy what you're doing you're going to do it more you're gonna do it better you're gonna want to learn more but it comes from a certain level of confidence and trust that it's gonna that it's what you're doing is worthwhile and if you measure that only in like money or career statistics you know you may never get there and you may always be insecure about that so but people that want to write usually there's more of like a passion more of a purity of I just want to do this for some reason and so if you can really hold to that as opposed to thinking that what what the results are of doing it is what matters so much you probably have a better time doing it you'll be happier you'll be more productive and prolific and the results usually actually will follow from that

Channel: Film Courage

Views: 22,495

Rating: 4.9568968 out of 5

Keywords: how to learn screenwriting, learn screenwriting, screenwriting tips, screenwriting advice, screenwriting 101, screenwriting techniques, how to write a screenplay, screenwriter, filmcourage, film courage, interview, screenwriting masterclass, screenwriting for beginners

Id: _NLfn_p08KU

Length: 59min 24sec (3564 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 31 2020