Articles- From idea to script
- From idea to script - Part II
This article has been revised on August 24rd, 2008
In the first part of this article i covered the very basics of story structuring for a screenplay, while that part was pretty much a common practice, this part of the article will digg deeper into my approach of writing a screenplay. So again a little disclaimer, do not take anything here as given facts, this is my procedure and probably you are better off with another workflow, but this one is very much based on characters that drive the story, so it is just the way i think.
I divided the approach into four main phases, after each phase you are one big step closer to the first draft of your screenplay. They very much depend on each other, and the order is there for a reason, as you will see in the last phase.
I. The brainstorming cycle
I called this phase cycle because working through that phase step by step is not really the right approach, it is better to write down some stuff, think about it, change a little bit on another part, re-think the previous part, and so on. So this phase is highly repetitive.
Actually i think especially this phase is really great if you are working on the story together with a partner. It is really inspiring to talk about the different pieces. So if you are working alone you should try to make conversation to yourself. That sounds a little bit ridiculous, but it does not mean that you should monologize, but to think and re-think about the stuff you are writing down.
So don´t rush yourself, think about it, write down a little bit, work on another part, change the previous part, and so on. It really is just like a puzzle, the different pieces are floating through your head and want to be put together into a nice picture.
In my experience the tool that is used best for this phase is OmniOutliner. It provides a very intuitive interface especially for structuring your thoughts and bringing them to screen.
Rough draft of the characters
When you begin to develop a story most likely you already have some of the characters in mind, at least the protagonist that drives the plot forward. So starting with some basic traits, appearance and outstanding behaviour or look is a good idea. As soon as you have one character the others will emerge automatically, nobody is completely alone (well, at least if the topic of the movie ist not right about that fact), and so the character will have some relations to other people.
A good idea for the other characters is to examine who the next closest persons to the protagonist are and if the antagonist is a human beeing he or she would be the next logical step as well.
Character Sheets
For keeping track of all the characters and their special attributes, traits, behaviour, etc. i really like working with a character sheet. There are lots of basic ideas and structures for such sheets, the ones that worked best for me are the following:
» Character Development Sheets from 1000dollarfilm.com.
» Mystery Man Character Development Sheet
In fact i compiled my own sheet by merging these two sheets and added my own preferences and approach. You can download it here:
» Character Development Sheet.
This way or the other, be it Excel sheets or just pen and paper, it is a good idea to keep track of different aspects of your character. Even if you end up never looking at it again (which happens a lot to me) it is nice to have it in this phase.
Character Development
It is crucial in this phace to already figure out the changes the protagonist will go through during the movie, thus working out the character arc. Characters begin the story with a certain viewpoint and, through events in the story, that viewpoint changes.
Of course there are certain basic characteristics that would never change, but since he has to reach his goal a certain change has to happen, otherwise he would just live like he used to, and for most of the people that would not make a good movie.
A really good resource besides many screenwriting books is the Transformational-Character-Arc series from The Unknown Screenwriter, he bundles 14 posts about character development. The bundle can be downloaded here: Transformational-Character-Arc-series.pdf.
Creating strong charactes is such a huge topic and fills books, so i won´t really go in deep here. Just keep in mind to avoid stereotypical characters and that each individual needs profound and rational causes for it´s actions. Also think about which influences shape a person, like his or her origin, religion, childhood, work, family and so on…
So step by step you gather the basic characters and write down the outstanding facts about them.
Rough draft of the story
Simultaneous to the characters you can structure your ideas for the plot, most of the time you jump between the characters and the story. Add a little trait here, change the plot there, another change of the relations between the characters, and so on. So both the story and the characters develop equally, and of course every change in one of them has an impact on the other. So like i mentioned in the beginning of this phase it is a creative cycle and each step correlates to the previous and the next one.
A very good and helpful approach is to already structure the story roughly into three our four acts, most of the time it is quite logical which incidence happens in which act. You could already begin to think about the incinting incident (which should be quite apparent since it is tightly connected to the story) and the different plot points. Having a rough idea of the plot points is quite enough for that phase, the strong characteristics will emerge during this creative cycle.
One important thing is to mention here: many movies heavily depend on their unique structure and use it to tell the story, so this approach may seem a little bit too vague. Nevertheless it is a good idea to choose parts of this approach to always keep an overview of the story (which is an essential thing if you play with different timelines and such), and even very confusing or complex movies are based on some kind of act structure (like Memento for example).
Finalizing this phase
As you cycle through this phase you will get a very solid idea of the characters and the plot, each cycle tightens them and if you notice that some characters or parts of the story don´t really work out yet, then just take one more cycle and they will evolve further.
Of course you can face situations where you recognize that something will definitely not work out, but this is the best phase to see that coming since you are just at the beginning, and changing some basic elements are not very expensive and time consuming. So it is a good idea to stay in this phase as long as possible and work out the weaknesses in the storyline and the characters, it´s better to take one cycle too much than too few.
And there is another thing about this phase: to a certain extend this cycle will be present until the movie is finished, there will always be something to change and any change has an impact on other things, and it is really common to change things during the shooting and also during post-production, so get familiar with rewrites.
II. The Outlining Phase
After this brainstorming cycle it´s quite time to structure the ideas you gathered, so write out the character biographies, the relations between that characters and so on. So for each character you finally got the characteristics and his or her background. So by the end of that phase the character sheet should be as complete as possible.
I noticed something for myself: the better i´m prepared and the better the character sheet is filled the fewer i need to actually use it, meaning i don´t really have to study it again when i´m working further on the script. I know the characters so well that it is simply not important to study it again and again, but it is important to have the character sheet as backup.
It is quite similar if you study for an exam and prepare a cheat sheet, but since you spent some time preparing it you get to know the material so well that you probably don´t need to cheat anymore.
The next step would be the story, so if you already structured the plot roughly into acts you´ll benefit now from it. In addition to the act structure you also have to figure out the different plot points and the inciting incident now.
Outlining the story
The next logical step would be to create an outline of the story. An outline basically is the structure of the story, it contains everything the movie will later be, just in a structured and abbreviated form. The software i use to outline my story is Movie Magic Screenwriter (one of the reasons i chose this software is it´s great outlining capabilities), but there are several other tools for outlining your plot. Some time ago i evaluated different screenwriting tools and ended up with that choice, my evaluation can be found here: One hard choice.
If you finished the outline you have got a full overview of the plot, you know the inciting incident and the different plot points and so on. As not every story consists of three acts you can just add acts if you need them, either way, the plot is right in front of you.
This kind of structure really gives you backup and i discovered that this method works best for me, at any given time i have an overview of the complete plot and know what´s going on and when it is going on.
Script Checklists
You might have encountered many checklists in books or the internet, there are really a lot of the available. Clive published a list that contains 61 questions you could ask about your script here: The Hollywood Script Checklist.
Based on that list i created a checklist on my own, i gathered different other questions about characters, plot, etc. Due to copyright material i won´t publish the checklist here, but if you are interested just drop me some lines and i could mail it.
Here are some few question that you could ask yourself about your story:
- » Is the story as compelling as you imagined it?
- » Is the dramaturgy present and suspense noticeable?
- » How long should the movie be approximately?
- » Do you really need all of the characters you wrote down?
- » Are there discrepances in the storyline?
- » Is the plot too much for the intended length of the movie?
- » Are all the relations between the characters solid and realistic?
- » Are some of the characters stereotypes?
These are just some questions you should ask yourself, as mentioned there are a lot more to take into consideration.
Don´t blow it up
Another important thing is to notice here: Gather as much information and material as possible, for example if you want to write a short movie work through the phases as you would write a feature film. In this construction phase you shrink the material down to the length you want the movie to be, because if you blow up something the audience will see that it is just blown up, on the other hand if you got plenty of stuff, you just kick out the weaker things and keep the strong ones, so in the end just the compelling parts of the story are in the movie.
III. Writing the screenplay
Well, time to get your hands dirty…
Treatment or screenplay first?
In previous versions of this article the third step was the treatment, and out of that treatment i just added dialogue and had a finished 1st draft of the screenplay. The reason i changed this approach was simply because i constrained myself too much. It´s quite hard to finish the treatment and then go over it all again to add dialogue, as soon as the treatment was finished the dialogue was something like a little annoyance that was left to finish the 1st draft.
Another thing is that the dialogue should somehow “flow” within the story, so instead of inserting it at the end it is a more natural approach to write it out when writing the action.
And finally another reason was the following: if you want to send your treatment to someone they most of the time expect a three to five-page document and not up to 60 pages. So somehow the fully written treatment was a waste of time (marketing wise, within the creative process it was ok).
After you finished your script and you want to send out a treatment just summarize the story in three to five pages and there you go.
Writing the screenplay
Since you´ve got a fully outlined plot writing the screenplay really is a pleasure, you just follow your outline and write the scenes out. If you happen to change anything in the outline make sure the changes are consistent within the whole story, but changing something is quite easy since you´ve got the outline.
A nice thing in Movie Magic Screenwriter is that you can actually leave the outline in the script, it won´t be printed out if you don´t want to. I leave the most important structure elements in the script, its quite easy to navigate through the story this way and changing anything is a lot easier in my opinion.
So at the end of the day you´ve got your first draft screenplay, now thats something!
Again, this most likely is just the beginning, but lots of hard work is behind you and with this approach you have a solid first draft script and a very good basis for a good movie.
Beyond the 1st draft
So what would be the logical next step with your first draft script?
Registering your work
An important thing is that you can (and should) register your screenplay. Every country has got different organisations that register screenplays, books, etc. In the USA the Writers Guild of America is responsible, in Austria it is Literar Mechana, so you just have to search for the particular organisation in your country.
On Rewriting
Rewriting is part of the game, so it´s quite a good idea to spread the script amongs people you trust and let them read it. Often you just forgot to clarify some things, sometimes there are problems that you have not seen.
It is also important to use the checklist for your screenplay after every finished phase, some questions might not be important right now (they become important in later phases), but the more often you check your story the better.
So based on the readers input and the checklist you can start to rewrite some parts of the screenplay, doing so is much easier if you left your outline intact.
Fade to black…
I hope this summary of my approach to finish the first draft of a screenplay is useful for others as well, i´d really appreciate it if you would drop me some lines and give me some feedback, just let me know what you think…
9 comments zu “From idea to script - Part II”
Leave a reply
andreas
, 17. June, 2007 at 7:40 pmhi
nice read!
btw i still love your tvspot:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrKh1dum77U
doh its one of your earlier works
keep on posting !
for the comment readers: the spot is for the austrian drumandbass magazine resident - http://www.resident.at
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Julian
, 14. December, 2007 at 5:33 pmSehr instruktiv - beide Teile. Danke!
Nebenbei: Ich kenne Storylines. SuperNotecard teste ich gerade. Interessante Funktionen. Aber es hat ein sehr schlechtes Schriftbild. Läßt sich das ändern?
michael
, 14. December, 2007 at 5:39 pmDankeschön.
Was genau meinst du mit schlechtem Schriftbild, werden die Buchstaben unleserlich gerendert? Bei mir funktioniert das eigentlich ohne Probleme (also mit den Default Werten)…
Julian
, 14. December, 2007 at 8:17 pmGerne.
Ja. Die Buchstaben sind schwach und stufig, mehr oder weniger unleserlich. So weit ich sehe, gibt es (nur) die Möglichkeit, Schrifttype und Schriftgröße einzustellen. Alle Einstellungungen, die ich versucht habe, verbessern die Schriftqualität aber leider nicht. Schade.
michael
, 15. December, 2007 at 9:56 amFalls du Windows verwendest versuch mal die Schriftglättung einzustellen, das könnte helfen.
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