On Doing Writing of a First Screenplay

I actually get this question a lot:

I’m thinking about writing a screenplay, blah blah, what should I do, tips, etc blah?

I don’t know why this comes to me, considering my one produced feature credit and my one web series credit, neither of which have been released yet.

Obviously this isn’t all that I’ve written or even had made – it’s just those are the only two that are public in any way.

I suppose it’s because I have a lot of readers who are writers, and I’m all accessible and have perfected the art of pretending to be able to pretend I’m intelligent.

So yeah – I was asked this over the weekend again, and decided to just put my answer up as a post for the long haul.

I’m doing it on Sunday, because a lot of you won’t care about the answers, but it’ll be here to link to in the future.

Thus…read on if you wish. Little to no jokes follow.

Everything or not much at all depends on what you plan to do with your first screenplay, but my best advice is as follows:

1) Keep it simple. Don’t try and write the next Pulp Fiction your first time out. You need to know the basics before you start getting clever and deconstructing traditional film storytelling.

I started writing somewhere in the early 2000s, and because of The Sixth Sense, I was convinced anything I wrote needed a huge twist at the end – one which was cleverly hinted at throughout the entire film. Debate whether The Sixth Sense‘s twist actually did this another time – you get my point.

Yes, you may feel like you’re being predictable or formulaic, but those movies get made and work because…they work. For example, action movies all follow a certain formula, and that formula exists because the formula makes for a good movie. There’s nothing wrong with following it, and you can still give it a unique voice, concept, and point of view within that formula.

Picking apart the formula can totally make for an amazing script/movie, but you better understand the inner workings of what you’re ripping open first.

2) Get software or a correctly formatted template of some kind. If it actually looks like a screenplay, you’ll feel a lot better about it, and if you want to have anyone read it who knows screenplays, they will too. Final Draft is the best. Here’s a link to an MS word template.

3) Save your best concept/be realistic. You won’t realize it at the time, but your first screenplay will suck, and it might be difficult to rewrite it in the future when you know the craft better, because you already burned your enthusiasm for it on the sucky one. First time out, use an idea you can have great enthusiasm for, but don’t mind throwing away forever if/when it doesn’t come out good.

I would say my first legitimately “okay” screenplay was my third one, which is also the one that got me my first agent. My first “good” one was my fourth, and my first one to generate income was my seventh. My first to get made was my eighth.

My ninth was technically (if not creatively) my best, simply because having actually seen something go from script to screen taught me more than anything else I’d ever learned put together.

(This doesn’t include scripts that were abandoned before completion because they just weren’t working. The point: screenwriting isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme, and if you only have one idea, you better be ready to think of some more.)

4) Read a bunch of professional screenplays, including some to movies you’ve seen. There are tons of them at JoBlo. Here are the scripts to 2WO G2N G2Y (web series) parts 4-8, if you’d like to see a little of my junk.

5) Write it, then read screenplay writing books afterward. This was my what my experience taught me. I read a bunch of books – mainly to put off actually writing. It was like reading a different language. These books will be way more useful if you’re able to put what they’re telling you into some kind of context.

Disclaimer: I was NOT good in school, and only learn things by doing them. I’m literally incapable of being taught, unless I can put it into like a real-world, in my hands, “doing” of something. It occurs to me this is probably why I’ve always hated history.

6) A screenplay is not a novel. You’re not attempting to make someone weep with your beautiful prose, and if we don’t need to absolutely see it onscreen, it doesn’t go in the script. If Joe has a messy apartment, “Joe’s apartment is a mess” will suffice. I don’t want to know what color Joe’s sink is, unless it’s necessary to know that for the story for some reason.

If you write a paragraph telling your reader how glorious the sunset is, it’s a waste of time. This is not prose or poetry – this is a blueprint for making a movie. “They watch the sunset – it’s beautiful.” That’s all you need – that might even be too much, if it’s obvious the sunset is supposed to be beautiful already.

7) Start reading John August’s website. Also go back and read the archives. There’s nice insight into the business as well as doing screenwriting itself. This is who John August is, if you’re not familiar.

8) Just write it, and stop talking about writing it. If you’re asking about it, you want to write it, so go write it.

These are just my opinions, and I know the one you’re burning up about is #3. Look, I hope you’re the exception – I hope your first screenplay is amazing and makes you a ton of money.

Keep in mind when you read those stories about the “first-time screenwriter” though – it usually means it’s their first produced screenplay, not the first one they ever wrote.

Anyway, I hope this is helpful – good luck to youse.