Writing Screenplays

by Dave Haslett

  14. Clever stuff: multiple viewpoints.

  Try writing a set of scenes that all take place at exactly the same time and in the same place. If you get it right the effect can be quite amazing and look very clever. Here’s how it works. During the first scene several other things can be seen happening in the background – perhaps someone arrives carrying a strange object, someone else has an argument, a fight breaks out, and so on. We don’t really understand what’s happening there yet, because we’re focused on what’s happening in the foreground.

  In the next scene we repeat everything that just happened, but from a different point of view. The camera is now focused on one of the background events that we saw earlier, so we can now see what that was all about. The event we witnessed in scene one is now one of the background events in scene two (and all subsequent scenes). So we might, for example, find out who came in carrying the strange object and why. All the other events that took place in the background of the first scene are also seen again – still in the background. We’ll focus on each of those later on.

  Gradually, as we work our way through each scene, focussing on the different events, the meaning of each one becomes clear and we start to understand how the whole thing fits together.

  There may be some interaction between the different events – that’s up to you. It looks more natural if there’s a bit of interaction, but it’s more complicated to write.

  If you want to see this in action (with three events) watch the British TV show Coupling, series 4, episode 1 (titled Nine and a Half Minutes).

  15. Cluster plots.

  With a large cast you can break the story up into several separate clusters. One group is working on this project, another group is working on that project, and so on. These separate clusters might come together at the end, but not necessarily. Some members of each cluster will interact with members of other clusters at various points along the way. For example, let’s say that some teenagers have gone on a camping trip. They’ve divided into several clusters: the boys who are trying to get off with the girls; the girls who are trying to get off with the boys; the chocoholics who are desperate for some junk food rather than all this wholesome stuff; the teachers or scout leaders who are in charge; and perhaps also the local inhabitants who are out to cause trouble. Each group will contribute something to the overall storyline. Each group will interact with every other group at some point, helping or hindering their plans. The overall storyline though is very simple – the teenagers go camping, each cluster has a series of unrelated mini adventures, and then they all go home. Each character will have changed or grown up in some way, but no single event will have changed all of them simultaneously. For a great example of this sort of thing in action try watching the movie American Pie.

  16. Collaboration.

  Many screenplays and TV shows are written by more than one person. Would collaborative writing suit you better than writing alone? If so, think about where you might find a writing partner. If you have already had some success, your agent or a director may be able to recommend someone. Or you could look for scripts, shows and movies that are similar to those you write yourself, and contact the writer via the producer or his agent. If you haven’t yet had any success but would like to have a go at writing with a partner or as a group, here are a few things you can do to find people. Try your local writer’s group, and other groups in your region. Get yourself known at fairs, shows or conventions that are relevant to your genre. Go to literary festivals and film festivals and attend any of the events that are relevant to you – strike up a conversation with other attendees or members of the audience and see if you can find anyone who might be interested. It doesn’t really matter these days if they don’t live locally, as you can communicate using email, instant messaging, online collaboration software (including Google Docs which allows multiple people to work on the same document), make video link-ups using web cams, and make free voice calls using services such as Skype. Most phone companies also offer packages that include free evening and weekend phone calls.

  17. Competitions.

  There are many competitions for screenplays and short films. As well as regional contests, organisations such as the British Film Institute and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) also hold competitions – contact them for more details. Some TV stations run annual talent searches for film-makers. You should also try your regional arts board and the Arts Council. These competitions usually require completed films rather than scripts or screenplays, so it makes sense to study film-making yourself – perhaps take a part-time course – or work with a partner who is a film-maker. Even if you don’t want to do the actual filming yourself, it’s useful to know what goes on when making a film. Another advantage of taking a course is that you will meet people who have the necessary skills and equipment to make films. Ask the tutors as well as your fellow students, as they might also be interested or may be looking for a decent writer to work with.

  18. Concepts – 1.

  How much time do you spend thinking about the ‘concept’ of your screenplay rather than the storyline? Probably not enough, because no one ever does – apart from the true professionals. The concept is just a couple of lines where you sum up what your movie is all about. When a director calls an agent and asks, ‘What have you got for me?’ he won’t want to know about the storyline or the characters or the dialogue. He only wants to know the concept. The agent might reply, ‘I’ve got a horror: woman gives birth to a cannibal monster that tries to eat the whole town’. The director might say, ‘I think I’ll pass on the one. Anything else?’ And then the agent might read out the concept of your screenplay. This is your big moment – success of failure depends on the next sentence the agent utters. It’s worth spending some time working out the concepts of existing movies and then coming up with dozens of intriguing examples of your own. Show your list of concepts to other people – especially if they’re movie fans – and ask them which they’d like to see made into a movie. You could even try sending your list off to an agent, asking him if he thinks any of them would be worth further development. Don’t send more than a couple of pages, and enclose an SAE for his reply. You don’t need to take up much of his valuable time; just ask him to put a tick or a cross next to each concept to indicate whether it’s worth developing or not. He’ll make an instant decision on each one, just as a director would, but at least he’ll have a good idea about what directors are likely to be looking for. If he ticks any of them then it’s time to start thinking about the storyline and characters and putting an outline together. If he doesn’t tick any, it’s back to the drawing board to come up with some better concepts. Keep going until you find one that he’s prepared to tick. By doing this you’ll avoid spending months or years writing a screenplay that nobody wants.

  19. Concepts – 2.

  A great concept is unique – it has never been done before. Coming up with a unique concept is difficult, but not impossible. To make it even harder though, a great concept should also be completely obvious (in retrospect). It should be so obvious that when you mention your idea to other writers they kick themselves for not having thought of it first. So how do you come up with a unique but obvious concept? Combining two successful stories into one is a trick that’s been used many times. An example might be ‘Top Gun meets King Kong’ – the Air Force’s top pilot’s battle for supremacy (and the girl) as they try to take out a giant ape that’s ransacking the city. You could also change the setting: ‘Oliver Twist in space’ perhaps? Or how about switching genres, retelling a successful thriller as a romantic comedy for example? Or you could imagine yourself as an actor; what sort of role would you most like to play, and why? The heroic driver of a train in the golden age of steam? Or how about a racing driver back in the early days when it was really dangerous? If that’s the sort of part you’d most like to play then there will undoubtedly be plenty of actors who’d relish playing that role too. So use that as a starting poin
t for your concept.

  20. Dialogue: none.

  Why would a screenplay with no dialogue be useful? Because of the overseas market. Since there are no words, there’s no need for a translation, subtitles, or re-dubbing the dialogue using foreign actors. This works particularly well in comedy: think of Mr Bean, where the dialogue consists only of gestures and grunts. The action needs to be self-explanatory. A foreign viewer should be able to understand it just as well as you and me. Could it work for other genres too? Yes, but it might not be as easy. Think back to the silent movie era. It would be a good idea to watch a few of them to study their techniques.

  The biggest problem you might have in a modern movie is accounting for the lack of dialogue: why don’t the characters speak? There needs to be a good reason for it. In a comedy you can simply have them not speak because it’s funny. Here are some reasons for maintaining silence: they don’t want to wake someone, they don’t want the villains to hear them coming, they don’t want to disturb a ferocious dog, any noise might trigger an avalanche or set off an alarm, they have a medical or psychological condition that prevents them from speaking, and so on. You could put a whole strong of these reasons together, so that the entire movie is conducted without speech.

  21. Emotional impact.

  If a producer is going to invest millions of pounds in turning your screenplay into a movie he’s going to want to know exactly how each scene affects the audience. It’s worth plotting your screenplay not only according to the storyline, but by the experience the audience gets from it. When do you want them to feel scared, and exactly how scared should they be at that point? Do you want them to scream out loud? If so, does your screenplay make them scream? When should they feel happy? Do you want them to feel comfortably happy, or so happy that they cry? If it’s the latter, does your script make them cry? Try to find scenes from other movies that have the same emotional effect that you’re trying to achieve. Analyse that scene in terms of what the audience is feeling rather than what they’re seeing or hearing. Then copy the scene’s emotional structure and write scenes that duplicate those emotions using your own plot. Note that although a particular emotion peaks in this scene, it might have been building up in earlier scenes, so you may need to do some work there too.

  To gauge how well you’re doing, it’s worth getting as many people as possible to read individual scenes from your screenplay. Ask them to tell you how it makes them feel. Perhaps ask them to give the scene a score out of 10 for the effect or emotion you’re looking for. In a really intense scene you’re looking for an average score of 8 or higher. If the average comes back as 6 then you’ll need to work on that scene to make the emotion more intense, or move the scene so it has a greater impact on the audience.

  Not every scene will score highly for emotion, and nor should it. You have to give the audience a breather now and again. A moderately intense scene will seem much more intense if it immediately follows a peaceful scene. If people have only read your scenes in isolation, and the scores weren’t as high as you’d hoped, you can increase the effect these scenes have on your audience by putting relatively calm scenes immediately before them. So you might not need to rewrite these scenes at all, just move them or insert short, calm sections. Or you can simply cut between two plotlines, one relatively calm, the other more intense.

  22. Evolving a TV show.

  If you’re writing for TV, try watching a soap opera or sitcom. You might already be a regular viewer and know the characters well, which gives you a head start. Now try introducing a new character or a new family into the show and write an episode or two that features them. Involve them in the current storyline but let them find their own way. Now continue writing further episodes, but gradually let your new characters take over the show. The original characters will feature less and less. Perhaps some of the original characters could leave the show, and you can bring in new ones to replace them. They can bring in new storylines and backgrounds of their own. Bring in some new sets and locations and phase out the old ones. Eventually you’ll have a brand new show with all-new characters, sets and storylines, but with the same sort of feel and audience appeal as the original show.

  23. Getting ideas: Shakespeare – 1.

  You could do worse than borrow a few ideas from William Shakespeare. In many of his plays he uses famous historical characters and gives them new dimensions – such as sexual urges. Such shocking behaviour would have caused an outrage if he’d used real people from his own time – he would probably have been beheaded. But by using historical figures he could get away with it. He also added new characters of his own devising into the mixture. His stories of lust and licentiousness among the upper and ruling classes tell tales of what probably did go on at that time, but that nobody would have admitted to. The characters were portrayed larger than life, the language was poetic and the stories were often scandalous. This sort of writing never goes out of fashion!

  24. Getting ideas: Shakespeare – 2.

  Another idea you can borrow from Shakespeare is the fact that his work appealed to all levels of audience. The upper classes enjoyed his poetic writing and clever jokes and turns of phrases. These went completely over the heads of the illiterate working classes. But they enjoyed his plays as much as everyone else because there was so much action. There were ghosts and witches and knife fights and battles and lust and passion and murders – and lots and lots of action. Dialogue has its place too of course. But in a screenplay the action should always be centre stage. If you’re ever stuck for what to write, imagine an audience in Shakespeare’s time. The upper classes might enjoy the poetic dialogue and clever jokes, but bring on some witches and have people chase them with knives and sticks and everyone can enjoy the action!

  25. Getting ideas: the world’s religions.

  Many major movies have been based on Bible stories, Greek epics, and so on. But there are many other major and minor religions, each with their own book, scriptures, stories, fables, teachings, and so on. You’ll find plenty of epic and heroic tales among these. You could retell them exactly as they were written, or translate them into a different context – a modern comedy, romance or science fiction thriller loosely based on a story from the Koran for example.

  26. Getting production experience.

  It’s a good idea to get one of your scripts produced so you can see how the finished work compares with your original idea. You’ll also get experience of working with actors, directors, cameramen, lighting engineers, designers, set builders and so on. The best way of getting your script produced isn’t terribly glamorous or exciting, but it’s reasonably easy and very good experience. It’s making corporate training videos. There are a number of different routes into this. Look for job adverts in newspapers and magazines – in the UK The Guardian newspaper is a good place to look for media jobs. You could also contact local training, PR or marketing companies and ask them if they have any openings for scriptwriters for advertisements, speeches or training videos.

  [ALTERNATIVE] Even if you can’t get your own script produced, you could contact someone who produces corporate videos and arrange to spend a few days with them when they make their next production, purely as an observer.

  27. Getting started.

  It’s best not to just dive straight in and start writing your screenplay. And you certainly shouldn’t add any dialogue whatsoever until the rest of the story is in place. Let’s start by building a skeleton model. The first job is to think about your overall story and work out what will happen in each scene. Then write the first line or two of each scene by simply stating where and when it takes place and who is present. Underneath each scene use bullet points to list the key events that happen during that scene, and state what the end point of the scene is. The end point should be the strongest moment in the scene – the climax, the big moment of suspense. It sets up the next scene and makes people want to keep watching to see how it turns out. While the screenplay is still in this outline stage it’s eas
y to move things around if necessary to make the story work better.

  The next stage is to go back to the start and begin fleshing out the action, based on your bullet points. There’s no need for much detail yet; just state the facts: ‘Stan and Conrad fight over Erica; Conrad accidentally drives over Erica’s foot’.

  Then go back to the beginning again and do the same thing with the description. Don’t add too much description because the director will want to film it ‘his’ way. He doesn’t want to see your version of ‘how things should be’. If the haunted house has to be painted yellow because some of the action depends on that fact, then you should definitely mention it. Otherwise, don’t mention the colour. The main focus should always be on the action.

  The next stage is to begin thinking about the dialogue, but again just summarise it for now: ‘Stan tells Erica about the hidden treasure; Stan and Erica argue about who should get custody of Bianca’.