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Starting a screenplay can sometimes be as hard as finishing one.
Impatient to pull up to the front door of a classic motion
picture, I want to get everything right so quickly. This
impatience challenges my trust in the work, the creative process
of screenwriting. What exactly does trust mean? If I don't trust
my writing, then what am I? Frightened. This is the battle. If
I'm scared that everything I'm typing is worthless, then what?
My hands find something else to do. So trust is good and
important and essential to beginning this journey, alone, a trip
that will eventually take what comes out of you into millions of
people. But its just you now. And your trust.
Now, does trusting your writing mean sitting down with no ideas,
opening a new document, and starting to type? Of course. And no.
What I need to do is make a decision and execute. And this
decision often comes back to whether I should write an outline
or treatment before I start writing my screenplay, or, with a
rough idea, a shadowy shadow of something calling from my brain,
start writing?
I have done both in the past. When I wrote the first draft of
LOVE LIZA, I really had very little idea of where the story was
going. I had a few things to start off with, and somewhere I
wanted to end up down the road, but that was it. It was
terrifying and difficult to remain seated. But the most original
characteristics of the screenplay came out of the immediacy of
trying to come up with whats next, with my fingers resting on
the keyboard. I became sold on this process. Outlines killed
creativity, because writing an outline is not actual
screenwriting. Its outlining.
But then I came to Hollywood and tried to tell executives the
little ideas I had. I would very proudly announce an image, a
picture in my head, that I knew contained the fire of an entire
epic. I was shocked when they asked, Then what happens? I didn't
have an answer. Why? Well. BECAUSE I HADNT WRITTEN IT YET. It
seemed like a completely stupid question. What happens? What
happens?? Did I say I had a complete screenplay to show you?!
You know the rest. No phone calls and bewilderment and then I
found myself in the city of pitches, and starting to flesh out
things into 14 page screenplay treatments. I did so, convinced
that it could never be that good, that it was forced, and
staged, and predictable. I was shocked to find out that it did
not destroy my creativity. I was still able to come up with
interesting, original things. But deep down I knew. This was
still not screenwriting. This was not the art of screenwriting.
And I'm right.
So now what was I going to do? What was better? If I was to sit
down and spec something out, how was I supposed to go about it?
First off, I'm lazy, so having a treatment or an outline sitting
next to my laptop to walk me through the first draft is very
appealing, despite knowing that the inspiration driving a
treatment is different than the juice that comes when writing
the screenplay blindly. And I have sat down and written 90
pages, trying to find the story, only to simply start over. This
is a lot of work, but I've come to recognize that this work is
not lost. This is the path. It hurts, it kills, it bludgeons, it
fatigues, it flattens, but its the road. Believe me.
But what about a heist movie, or a mystery? A thriller with
twists? Aren't movies sometimes puzzles? Can we find this stuff
without a plan? Don't you have to figure this stuff out? Yes and
no. Flying by the seat of your pants often produces jaw-dropping
turns the audience will never see coming. Why? The writer
didn't. This is the largest reason why studio movies are
predictable----the fabric of the script is shot through with the
knowledge of the ending of the story.
If we are to plot out the map of our movie with a treatment,
beat sheet or outline, we better be damn sure its the real
thing. Putting our best foot forward with a very strong outline
is only the start of what will end up as a screenplay. Despite
putting that golden outline next to our keyboard, we will find
that turning it into a screenplay is still, I'm awfully sorry, a
lot of work. Scenes that we imagined to be amazing will suddenly
be impossible to write. And why does that upset us? Why does
that frustrate the writer?
Well, we thought we had a short cut. We thought we were going to
sneak into the back of a classic movie. My journey as a writer
has been marked by the learning and relearning that all that
wood has to be cut out there in the back yard, whether I like it
or not. If I wanna do this, I have to swing the axe.
But we know, if we trust our gift, that something beautiful is
coming, regardless if we have an outline or not. Perhaps the
writers who work from outlines should throw them out. Perhaps
the writers who write like the house is on fire, with nary a
note within miles, should sit down and write a treatment.
Treatments are fun, too.
I do both, switching back and forth when I need to. When I'm
writing and I start to feel blindfolded, I turn to jot down a
few notes, sketch a few ideas, track a character arc, reorder an
act. But when I think I'm caught up in pitches and notes and
beat sheets and the safety of plans, I chuck it all and write
like I did when I was a kid.
Did we use notes when we were kids?
Article URL:
http://www.bluecatscreenplay.com/About/how_to_start_a_screenplay.
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Copyright © 2009-2015 BlueCat Screenplay Competition
Winner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the Sundance
Film Festival for LOVE LIZA ,
Gordy Hoffman has written and directed three digital shorts for
Fox Searchlight. He made his feature directorial debut with his
script, A COAT OF
SNOW, which world premiered at the 2005 Locarno
International Film Festival. He is also the founder of the BlueCat Screenplay
Competition. Dedicated to develop and celebrate the
undiscovered screenwriter, BlueCat provides written
screenplay analysis on every script entered. In addition,
Gordy acts as a script consultant for screenwriters, offering
personalized feedback on their scripts through his consultation
service,
www.screenplaynotes.com. For more articles by Gordy on
screenwriting, visit
www.bluecatscreenplay.com.
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