Screenwriting experience?

[SimonDoom]

I'm curious if anyone here has screenwriting experience, and if that experience preceded, followed, or has had any connection to writing at Literotica, or if writing at Literotica has had any impact or influence on one's screenwriting.

I'm working on a movie screenplay. I hope to finish it before the end of this month. I have no illusions about the chances of a spec screenplay getting purchased and turned into a movie, but it's been a lot of fun. It's a very interesting medium for writing. Very different from writing short stories. I can't say that writing stories on Literotica has taught me specific things that are useful for writing a screenplay, but it's bolstered my confidence to try it.

 

[Handley_Page]

I'm curious if anyone here has screenwriting experience, and if that experience preceded, followed, or has had any connection to writing at Literotica, or if writing at Literotica has had any impact or influence on one's screenwriting.

I'm working on a movie screenplay. I hope to finish it before the end of this month. I have no illusions about the chances of a spec screenplay getting purchased and turned into a movie, but it's been a lot of fun. It's a very interesting medium for writing. Very different from writing short stories. I can't say that writing stories on Literotica has taught me specific things that are useful for writing a screenplay, but it's bolstered my confidence to try it.

Good For You!
Perhaps you'd care to give us a few clues about what, & how etc?

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I once took a shot at writing a screenplay for one of my longer works, but gave up. I knew the story would work, I just lost interest, like so many other things. I even downloaded a piece of software that formatted it for you. It was like Word for screenplays. Scrivener I think. Although now I believe you can only use it online.

A screenplay, in my opinion, needs to be dialog heavy. So if you write a lot of dialog in your lit. stories that might work.

Authors that write nothing but narration... not so much.

 

[SimonDoom]

I once took a shot at writing a screenplay for one of my longer works, but gave up. I knew the story would work, I just lost interest, like so many other things. I even downloaded a piece of software that formatted it for you. It was like Word for screenplays. Scrivener I think. Although now I believe you can only use it online.

A screenplay, in my opinion, needs to be dialog heavy. So if you write a lot of dialog in your lit. stories that might work.

Authors that write nothing but narration... not so much.

I purchased Final Draft software, which is excellent. It handles all the formatting, which is crucial. It also has features like index cards that help with the outlining and drafting.

The formatting restrictions in a movie screenplay are FAR stricter than for a short story or novel. Narration must be kept to a minimum. Dialogue is the thing. A 2-hour movie length imposes all kinds of restrictions on what the author can and must do to finish the story. But it's an extremely interesting artistic exercise.

 

[SimonDoom]

Good For You!
Perhaps you'd care to give us a few clues about what, & how etc?

I don't want to talk about it in detail, but it's a sci-fi thriller. I've wrestled with various different ideas and this was the one in which the complete story came to me most easily, so I'm going with this one.

I have no idea what I'm doing. I've read some books but am a newbie. Curious if anyone else here knows anything about this process.

 

[Hypoxia]

My sorta sister, a NYT Bestseller lister, once wrote screenplays for kids' Saturday cartoons. She said it was the hardest work she's done in her life, worse than picking strawberries for farmworker wages. Novelizing SciFi films was easier and paid better.

I have read that 18% of the population of greater Los Angeles are aspiring screenwriters. Good luck.

 

[HBergeron]

I've written a number of screenplays and a ton more TV pilots - previous to being on Lit. I've only put up one 'story' here - more of a slice of life sexual encounter than a real story.

Screenwriting is my favorite medium - all you have to show the audience is what they see, what characters say, and how they say it. No omnipotence, unless you go with a narrator or text giving history or insights, and I don't like either of them.

Good luck with yours - the movie biz is a tough place. I have a writing partner with some 'okay' contacts, but it really is about who you know - no matter how dood your script is.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I purchased Final Draft software, which is excellent. It handles all the formatting, which is crucial. It also has features like index cards that help with the outlining and drafting.

The formatting restrictions in a movie screenplay are FAR stricter than for a short story or novel. Narration must be kept to a minimum. Dialogue is the thing. A 2-hour movie length imposes all kinds of restrictions on what the author can and must do to finish the story. But it's an extremely interesting artistic exercise.

Yes, it was an interesting experience. I did enjoy it until I no longer did.

And the software I used was Trelby. It too was for writing screenplays and it was and still is free.

 

[SolarRay]

I've got screenwriting experience and have written several prior to joining Literotica. I'm not sure I make any connection to what I do here or to fiction writing in general. I also write poetry. To be honest, I approach all three in very different modes. As others have said, screenwriting in particular has a very precise set of rules and requirements that make the writing process quite unique. It's a lot of fun but in a world unto its own, I would say. I'd echo HBergeron's last point, but still I would encourage you to give it a shot though, why not?

 

[SimonDoom]

I have a follow up question on mechanics for those who have tried it: what steps did you follow? Did you write a detailed treatment or outline first? Did you write scenes first, sequentially or nonsequentially? Or did you just dive in and start at the beginning of the script and write? Some books recommend writing out the scenes first, on index cards or via software. I've got the software. I'm inclined to do a solid outline, because with a movie the plotting and organization has to be pretty tight and I don't to write myself into corners I can't get out of and waste time.

 

[HBergeron]

I have a follow up question on mechanics for those who have tried it: what steps did you follow? Did you write a detailed treatment or outline first? Did you write scenes first, sequentially or nonsequentially? Or did you just dive in and start at the beginning of the script and write? Some books recommend writing out the scenes first, on index cards or via software. I've got the software. I'm inclined to do a solid outline, because with a movie the plotting and organization has to be pretty tight and I don't to write myself into corners I can't get out of and waste time.

God, I hate writing treatments or even synopses. I only put out a completed script, so it's available as is for reading.

Typically, I know the story and how it ends before I even type the title page, so I start with the first page and when i get an idea for a future scene, I write that, then jump around. Eventually, you pull the drawstring that keeps the continuity true. Very rarely does the basic story change once I've started plotting it out.

It's always boggled my mind that Shyamalan didn't realize the Bruce Willis character should be dead until his 10th draft. Personally, without that, I probably wouldn't have started the story, but then, he's famous and I'm not...

The first thing to do, for me, is to concentrate on the most difficult areas, where 'writing yourself into a corner' can happen. Too often, I see characters doing out of character things to move the story in the right direction. Everything needs to be bulletproof.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I once tried to write screenplays just for the fun of it. The only guidance I had were drafts of real scripts I found on-line. Here are two versions for the same movie:

http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/the-haunting_production.html

http://www.horrorlair.com/scripts/The-Haunting.pdf

The upside: It's a great way to practice dialogue and using dialogue to create characters.

The downside: I couldn't stay within the limitations of the medium. My scenes were too long and wordy (maybe I should have tried plays for the theater). The total length of the one movie I sort of finished would have been five hours at least. I thought, "Hey, it's a mini-series!" but that was a cop-out I think.

Definitely read the ones that are on-line.

 

[SimonDoom]

I once tried to write screenplays just for the fun of it. The only guidance I had were drafts of real scripts I found on-line. Here are two versions for the same movie:

http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/the-haunting_production.html

http://www.horrorlair.com/scripts/The-Haunting.pdf

The upside: It's a great way to practice dialogue and using dialogue to create characters.

The downside: I couldn't stay within the limitations of the medium. My scenes were too long and wordy (maybe I should have tried plays for the theater). The total length of the one movie I sort of finished would have been five hours at least. I thought, "Hey, it's a mini-series!" but that was a cop-out I think.

Definitely read the ones that are on-line.

I've done that. I'm surprised at how many there are online. I've read dozens of them. You're right about dialogue. What you see in a good script is how essential the dialogue is to push the film forward, and also how essential it is to strip out of the dialogue everything that isn't essential. It's a good lesson for stories as well.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

Yeah I have - a long time ago and I only worked on part of it. But one of the actors won an Oscar and it pretty much launched the careers of two others. None of these people know me at all.

And I don't think they could care less. The movie was originally made as a tax loss but pretty much ended up launching the 'legit drama' careers of at least two now very well-known stars.

I'm sure they thought they were operating off the original film script - except that guy had had a nervous breakdown and p*d off and never came back after a million re-writes, he thought they had run out of money (which they pretty much had!) and the producer was lying in a coma in a hospital following poisoning from stepping on a stone-fish the first day of the final filming sessions when he thought he was going to 'take a dip' in the warm Tropical sea.

As far as I can tell, except for a tiny handful of people who get deeply involved in the entire process - such as someone like a Seth Rogen, most professional actors, even, or maybe ESPECIALLY, the biggies, are just contract hands who work virtually by the day/by the minute and then they 'go.' ...Unless you're in a Woody Allen thing or a Stanley K., thing.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I have a follow up question on mechanics for those who have tried it: what steps did you follow? Did you write a detailed treatment or outline first? Did you write scenes first, sequentially or nonsequentially? Or did you just dive in and start at the beginning of the script and write? Some books recommend writing out the scenes first, on index cards or via software. I've got the software. I'm inclined to do a solid outline, because with a movie the plotting and organization has to be pretty tight and I don't to write myself into corners I can't get out of and waste time.

As the "book" I was trying to put into a screen play was already written as scenes and chapters in yWrite, I just used those. It never occurred to me to write them in any but sequentially, although I know that's not the way they are filmed.

 

[SimonDoom]

As the "book" I was trying to put into a screen play was already written as scenes and chapters in yWrite, I just used those. It never occurred to me to write them in any but sequentially, although I know that's not the way they are filmed.

Some books advocate a non-sequential way of planning the screenplay -- focusing on scripting out or writing brief descriptions of scenes and putting them on index cards, which can then flipped around and reordered. It makes sense in some ways. For instance, in my screenplay, which has a combo of sci fi and horror elements, I haven't worked out the entire plot sequence, but I've come up with plenty of specific scene ideas, which I need to write down to preserve them, and I need a way of organizing them. Final Draft offers the ability to write scene descriptions on digital index cards. They can be reorganized before the drafting of the final version of the screenplay, with dialogue, begins.

Most books seem to advocate carefully plotting out the entire screenplay before writing it, but, of course, there are those who teach and those who do, so I wonder.

 

[SamScribble]

I have written for both film and TV. Yes, convincing dialogue is essential. As a general rule, everything that a character says should advance the story or fill out the character. But it's also important to remember that film is first and foremost a visual medium. People 'watch' movies.

Although as a short story writer I often start writing without knowing where the story is going, I find script writing a lot easier if you write a treatment first - if for no other reason than it forces you to think about set-up, development, and resolution within your allotted time. One of the first screenplays that I worked on was a partial rewrite. The original writer had used an hour or so to set the scene and introduce the main characters, and left only 40 minutes to tell what was quite a complicated story.

Good luck.

 

[AfterDusk]

Not to breathe life into an old thread, but practice makes perfect. Adapting a saga for screen might be too daunting of a task for most, so congrats on putting for the effort.

If you’re interested, I’d suggest looking at NYC at Midnight; they do a few screen writing competitions. I’ve done it a couple times before, it is a good way to get in the necessary practice and get honest feedback from judges.

 

[gunhilltrain]

My sorta sister, a NYT Bestseller lister, once wrote screenplays for kids' Saturday cartoons. She said it was the hardest work she's done in her life, worse than picking strawberries for farmworker wages. Novelizing SciFi films was easier and paid better.

I have read that 18% of the population of greater Los Angeles are aspiring screenwriters. Good luck.

I can believe that 18% figure. It probably seems easy to them because almost everybody has experience with movies and TV but fewer read novels and short stories. Plus there's the lure of big money.

I had a friend who studied screenwriting at the University of Southern California in the 1980s. Then he saw what really goes on in Hollywood and he came back East to work in publishing.

https://cinema.usc.edu/writing/index.cfm

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

gunhilltrain

Great points.

I'd say these things but I'm just too cynical these days and usually just drift around the key issues being vague on purpose. I find you can't teach people anything and ya can't change their fucking dumb-as-a-box-of-rox minds about ANYTHING.

So I don't bother. You are right. Not many people read anything these days, not even the instructions inside the box when they get their latest item of electronic crap.

And that doesn't mean to say there is no future in writing, or that no one will ever read books again - it's just that prolly three people in whole damn world right now know how it will ever happen.

 

[gunhilltrain]

gunhilltrain

Great points.

I'd say these things but I'm just too cynical these days and usually just drift around the key issues being vague on purpose. I find you can't teach people anything and ya can't change their fucking dumb-as-a-box-of-rox minds about ANYTHING.

So I don't bother. You are right. Not many people read anything these days, not even the instructions inside the box when they get their latest item of electronic crap.

And that doesn't mean to say there is no future in writing, or that no one will ever read books again - it's just that prolly three people in whole damn world right now know how it will ever happen.

I feel some empathy for the students depicted in the U.S.C. screenwriting program I linked to. (Universities have very slick on-line advertising beyond anything I was subject to decades ago.) You can even read samples of some of their work.

Will these aspiring scriptwriters have any advantage in the entertainment machine by getting their BFA or MFA degrees? Perhaps a bit, but I'm just guessing.