There’s no shortage of advice on how to write a screenplay on the internet. So on January 5th, Kasie and Rex added their voices to the mix. Including evaluating some of those other sources. Here are the show notes:

Theme for the day

Screenwriting for Dummies

Agenda

• Quick Catch Up
• Yesterday was National Screenwriters’ Day
• What do you have to do to write a screenplay?
• What makes screenwriting harder than regular writing?
• What skills do you need to be a screenwriter?

Listen to the podcast

Segment 1

Our first conversation about film adaptations of books happened way back in August 2019 with episodes 54 & 55 – we talked so much we had to continue it out the next week. But yesterday was National Screenwriters’ Day and so I delivered my five inimitable screenwriters on the morning show:

• Tina Fey — Mean Girls, 30 Rock, Saturday Night Live
• The Coen brothers — The Big Lebowski, Raising Arizona, o Brother Where Art Thou, and Fargo
• Julius J. And Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch — Casablanca
• Greta Gerwig — The Barbie Movie, Ladybird
• Aaron Sorkin — The West Wing, The Newsroom

Only the Casablanca crew was working from source material, and that was a play. The others were written for the screen, specifically.

So what about that category at the Oscars of “best adaptation” – what makes adapting harder (is it?) than creating for the screen?

Last April we visited specifically the adaptations process with Episode 228 with the focus on the origin of the story. And today we’re going to expound upon that with the craft of bringing the book alive with some great ones and some terrible ones.

For example, what’s the difference between Wonka as played by Gene Wilder and Johnny Depp? They both have the same source material. So why are these interpretations so different?

I just watched Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret. which was a Judy Blume novel in the 70s and became a cool retro look at teenage-ish girls 50 years later.

There’s a great line in Entourage (I think) where Jeremy Piven’s character says something to the effect of, “if screenwriting is hard, why do Matt Damon and Ben Affleck have Oscars?”

Segment 2

What are the essentials of the craft? If you have two hours to listen, try this podcast. We’re going to try to sum it up for you.

Let’s start with the list – bloggers LOVE lists – of the six basic steps you need to take when writing a screenplay. This is from masterclass.com so you know it’s gold (link):

1. Write your logline – the one line description of the film that magically includes the main character, the major plot points, the central conflict, and the antagonist all in the same sentence. In less than 50 words. Ha! Examples (from screencraft.com which is GREAT website for you would-be screenwriters):

• A depressed suburban father in a mid-life crisis decides to turn his hectic life around after becoming infatuated with his daughter’s attractive friend.
• A young F.B.I. cadet must confide in an incarcerated and manipulative killer to receive his help on catching another serial killer who skins his victims.
• The lives of two mob hit men, a boxer, a gangster’s wife, and a pair of diner bandits intertwine in four tales of violence and redemption.

2. Write an outline – consider a three act structure 1) set-up, 2) inciting incident, 3) redemption. (I think a few fine points are missing, but whatev). You can also do beat sheets with each item being a single line summarizing the action and consequences of the scene.
3. Build a treatment – kind of like a short story, it’s the prose version of your screnplay. We have this, don’t we, as novelists? But if you’re working on just the screenplay, you might not. The treatment can help flesh out the outline without doing all the work of the script itself.
4. Write the screen play. In present tense. Using proper formatting. This is the hard work, apparently. Duh.
5. Format the screenplay – even though we were meant to draft it in proper format, there are tools apparently for actually making it look right on the page. So there’s that.
6. Edit the screenplay. Think of yourself as perusing the wreckage of really good party – the writing being the party and editing being the clean up afterward.

How useful was that? Was it? At all?

Segment 3

Apparently, screenwriting can also be cleverly summarized by Three C’s (link):

• Concept
• Character
• Conflict

Let’s do an example:

The concept is a love triangle – an American ex-patriot must choose between the woman he loves and helping her husband escape the Nazis. It’s about love and sacrifice. It’s about war and the choices we made when all of the choices are bad ones.

The character is a brokenhearted, somewhat bitter, but underneath it romantic and noble bar owner. The character is a woman torn between love and duty. The character is a man who recognizes his own worth as bigger than a single man should be. The character is a corrupt government official who mostly looks out for himself and those who make it easier for him to do so.

The conflict is that Rick and Ilsa can never have what they had in Paris again, no matter how much they might both want it. Sacrifices must be made to do what is right (which is to defy the Nazis and aid the resistance of course).

But this isn’t different from novel writing, is it? What makes screenwriting different? Where are the mechanics, besides formatting? It’s in what gets shown. You cannot tell you must show and those cues – the screen time of the action – are what matter.

So in an adaptation of Ready Player 1 we see all the action on the screen. While in the book, most of the action is told to us after it has occurred.

Segment 4

What skills do you need to be a screen writer? Try this link (another list):

1. Passion
2. Persistence
3. Flexibility
4. Knowledge
5. Consistency
6. Always be writing
7. Networking

How beautifully generic. What about these:

• Ability to tell a compelling story – Kev said he admired writers who could pull you in and keep you there. Examples?
• Mastery of cinematic elements – while you won’t get to decide camera angles necessarily or blocking, your script will include enough hints at the filming to help the director envision what the scene would look like.
• Dialogue writing skills – most language in film is between two characters (see Castaway for a notable exception) so you should be good at capturing how people speak and respond to one another.

Think of it this way:

You know the story. Now envision it. Now explain that vision on the page. Piece of cake? Sure it is. See earlier statement about Damon and Affleck.