My Process for Outlining a Screenplay

hello and welcome to story skeptic this is another writing video mostly for screenwriters the last video i did on screenwriting was how to pick the right idea and this is the next part about outlining when you've found your story and have brainstormed some and you want to start writing this is where outlining comes in and this video will be about the process of outlining especially my personal process and hopefully you can learn something about it it's the same process i've done for my three last projects and i think it works really well and thus makes the writing process effective predictable and enjoyable writing an outline is uh incredibly hard and time consuming and if you just imagine all the time you spend on writing a screenplay from start to finish i would say the top part here is the amount of time you spend on writing the screenplay while this bottom part here will be the time you spent on brainstorming and outlining and preparing this is certainly true for screenwriting i think it's probably not the case for something like a book where you spend quite a lot of time just writing the thing but it really feels true for screenwriting i'm just showing you this so you understand actually how much time you're supposed to divide between actually writing and preparing to write so then when you have an idea i do this and i'm sorry it's in another language but anyways my handwriting is so awful that you it's difficult to read anyway but the point is this is only for you it's just to help you figure out the plot here at the top i have a conspiracy which is the title of the movie or this was a 40 page screenplays or a long short film and at the side you can see the acts while i brainstorm i just uh this it's just empty and then i put on post-it notes as i go and the last scene i just written explanation uh ending so it's not like you have to have everything figured out at this stage then i would also advise to pitch it that's what i did i had a friend who loves movies and he came over and i just pitched him the story and it's not just to get maybe some feedback and some help it's also just to tell someone about your story it's often enough just talking about it you're gonna realize oh that didn't sound that nice or or maybe they're gonna ask like uh but what about that character oh what about that gun that doesn't make sense they they're probably gonna point out something and that's probably what i've done with these two white notes i changed something that was uh pointed out so after i done this for a week or something like that i transferred this to a word document this is another project and again if you can't read norwegian that's completely fine it's just to show the concept of the outline so i really like to have like one mood picture this is what i think represents the show or the film or whatever and each of these paragraphs might include more than one scene and this document which ended up being four pages i spent a lot of time writing this is where the bulk of my work goes into and in this case you want to be itching to write the first draft it should be almost a bit like you have to hold yourself back but at the moment at the point you just have to go for it and just write the first draft that's the first part of outlining i do and i do outlining kind of two times i do it once like this before the first draft and another time after the first draft before i start the second draft i just like write out all the scenes on post-it notes or like just notes and put them out on the table or on the wall i really like this part of the process it's um it's very very nice to do after the first draft because you don't have a nice overview of the project there's a lot of stuff and thoughts that pop up while you're writing but you just keep on going the process here is just that i read through the screenplay but as i read through i write these post-it notes again this time i use it's not like you have to have a typing machine i just like to use it because it's it's fun and it gives you the same font as you have in the screenplay so i type out these notes put them out and you work your way through the screenplay writing each scene into a sentence or a paragraph then you end up with something like this and if it's a really long movie it might be a lot more and this is that 40 page screenplays so if you were writing this for a whole movie it would be like three times as many notes and then the really nice thing about this is that it becomes quite clear what's uh missing and instead of starting a second draft right away and removing scenes and writing new scenes within that draft which can take a long time writing a new scene on just a piece of paper takes like seconds and it's so easy to move around you can even like pull out the scenes all these notes to the left there i just pulled out from the story i often like do this add and take away this whole way of outlining with post-it notes and especially physically on like a table or on a wall i borrowed from dustin lance black who is an oscar running screenwriter he does some really heavy research in these notes as well but i think the process is really helpful and when i go back to write that second draft i start on the top left corner and i just pick up that note and i tell myself what's the point is it needed is there anything i can improve and as i rewrite that scene i try to do something with it if you liked the video like it and subscribe for more screenwriting tips i make this every now and then so anyways thanks for sticking around and i'll see you in the next video bye [Music] you

Channel: Storyskeptic

Views: 452

Keywords: film, screenwriting, behind the curtain, filmmaking, screenwriter, writing process, how to write a screenplay, screenplay 101, screenwriting course, Outline twice, storyskeptic, how to outline, outlining process

Id: -DMLWiM6OAM

Length: 6min 36sec (396 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 04 2022