How To Write a Feature Length Screenplay

1Bryan • 16th Dec 2006 • Tutorials and FAQ • feature, how, length, photoplay, screenplay, screenwrite, screenwriter, screenwriting, script, to, write, writing

Screenwriting is about learning to write in a visual form.

After all, that’s what moviemaking is all about, it’s what sets screenplays apart from novels or plays; they are highly, highly visual. The visual element is king! And sometimes it can be difficult to change your style of writing. It takes work, it takes practice. If you are writing to sell, and not just for your own filmmaking purposes, you will also need to learn to dumb things down… a lot, in some cases. If a producer is confused and doesn’t understand what’s happening in your script, it will end up in the trash bin very quickly. You aren’t writing traditional prose, so you don’t need to be overly eloquent. If your character, Bob, walks over there, then write: BOB walks over there. Don’t get too technical or poetic, unless it’s necessary or if you’re revealing character traits.

Your script could also easily end up in the can if it’s in the wrong format. The screenplay format is rather unique, it’s important to stay on top of how things are organized. But I’ll talk about format later.

The visualization of ideas, as opposed to the cerebral translation of ideas into words, is the most difficult challenge for beginning screenwriters. Before you start to write, find a picture, photo, any work of art or pictorial which communicates to you an emotional point of view. An emotional point of view is something that motivates you to want to tell a story. This is a great technique for getting started. We must train ourselves to use PICTURES to tell the story, not words. Get used to collecting pictures, lots of them! Every time you see a picture that catches your eye, cut it out and save it. The more you watch a picture, the more the picture wants to tell you a story.

The more you concentrate on the form and style of the picture, the more the pictures begins to take on a life of its own. Words only get in the way. Pictures will stimulate the world inside your screenplay. They are the key to universal communication. And that’s what you’re striving for in your writing, universal communication. So when anyone, anywhere reads your story they can all equally understand what you’re saying visually. Fiddling with human perception is the greatest tool of a screenwriter.

If you’re going to write a screenplay then you need one very important thing: a story. But where is this story coming from? You may already have an idea, but for some people finding a story is the hardest part. There are lots of places to find good ideas.

1). Personal experiences
2). Comic books
3). TV
4). Novels
5). Existing movies
6). Newspapers & magazines
7). History
8). The Bible

Any where you look there is a story to be found. Find your story and develop it. Movies are about telling exciting stories about exciting people in an exciting way. A good story is about someone with whom we have some empathy. This person wants or desires something badly. This something, however, is difficult or almost impossible to get, do, or achieve. The story includes audience participation, fiddling with human perception, as I said before. Making the audience think they know something when maybe they don’t. It’s your power to wield! And it sounds pretty simple right? Maybe not.

Before you start writing and developing your story, there are many things to do. You must KNOW your story first. Take your idea and describe it in about one type-written page. Now take that page and condense it to two paragraphs. Now describe your basic story in no more than two sentences! (this is called a log line). You should be able to do this with ease before moving forward.

Stories, especially screen written stories, are about problems and solutions. Watch any movie and count the number of individual problems and solutions. You’ll find many, and you’ll discover the story usually revolves around each of them. Write about 10 problems and solutions for your story. They can be simple, just sentence or two. Problem A and Solution A. Problem B and Solution B. Bob can’t find his shoes. Bob looks around and finds them underneath his bed. The boy doesn’t have any friends. The boy discovers an injured bird and finally has a companion. As the Greek army nears Thermopylae the thoughts of many men turn to escape. Leonidas halts the march and sends all available messengers to call for aid.

Once you have 10, take a break. Write 10 more the next day, or the next week. Make sure these problems and solutions span your entire story: beginning, middle and end. If it helps, write them chronologically in respect to your story. Spend your time DEVELOPING these problems/solutions. These will comprise the backbone of your story. These will be your outline.

Coming up with an idea may be the easy part for some of you. But plotting it is quite another issue. The plot is a sequence of events that keeps your story focused and on track. It is the plot that controls the TEMPO of the film. Tempo is the most important concept in developing a plot. The tempo of a film keeps the audience glued to what you are communicating. The basic difference between European films and American films is the concept of tempo. As Americans, we generally think European films are slow and require too much patience in order to get to the heart of the story. On the other hand Europeans generally find American films to be far too rushed, to the point where there is no time to really perceive and follow along with a story.

The plot should be rooted in the visual aspect of your script, just like the story. Plots should be interesting enough to keep the viewer’s attention, but not so complicated that the viewer has a hard time following along. You don’t want your audience to lose attention or interest, THAT will kill your script. Especially when a producer reads it! As you begin to craft your plot, it’s always a great idea to start at the end and work backwards. Why? This will keep your plot focused and clear. A plot can become winded and repetitive if you are not clear on how your story ends. Always know how your story ends before you begin writing. And this may seem obvious, but the plot should always follow in form… the story. Don’t get so involved in your plot that you lose the heart of your story.

Characters are the people that take us through your story. So it’s important that they are developed and that the audience gets a feeling for who they are. If the audience doesn’t care about your characters, they won’t want to follow them through your story. Writing a feature length screenplay reminds me much of the process of how a bill becomes a law. OK, it’s a stretch, but you remember School House Rock, right? Follow me. The bill is introduced to a senate committee that holds hearings about the bill. At this point it could be stricken down, killed, or it could be sent to another hearing (a 2nd reading), and then 3rd reading, then to the House committee and more and more readings, then to the President, and possibly back to the Senate or House! Much like how your script will be passed through a Hollywood studio! There are so many hurdles to jump through and anywhere along the way it can be killed! Your screenplay is similar. If one of your story elements is off or missing, it can kill your screenplay. Or your screenplay could become a law… if you get my drift.

It’s important to make sure your characters are engaging and interesting. You want to avoid writing YOURSELF as every character. Sometimes that can be difficult, and you may not even realize you’re doing it. That’s why your characters should have backgrounds; they need to be well rounded and developed people even before you write their first line of dialogue! There are several things you can experiment with to create a unique character.

1). Idiosyncratic behavior, QUIRKS. Watch the show MONK? If so you know what kind of idiosyncratic behavior Monk has. Your character’s quirks don’t have to be as strong or noticeable as Monk’s, but things like that make characters interesting.
2). Personality
3). Vice
4). Temper
5). A Value System, what do your characters care about?
6). Nationality/Ethnicity, do they have an accent?
7). Humor
8 ). Romantic nature/sex drive
9). Religion.

All of these and more are great things to use to make your characters different and interesting. Here’s a good exercise. Take a character you’ve created or are thinking about and describe ten characteristics. Make sure the characteristics you choose either help tell the story, move the plot, or are so interesting that it will make your audience just want to know MORE! And don’t obsess about backgrounds for every character, because it’s important to know which characters are dynamic and which are static (primary or secondary to your plot). Some characters don’t NEED to be as developed to serve their purpose in your story.

Writing dialogue can be the hardest technique to master for beginning writers. The problem with most dialogue is that it doesn’t reveal character nor does it communicate differences between characters. Keep in mind that everyone speaks in a different rhythm. If you don’t write dialogue that distinguishes between character voice-rhythms, then it all sounds as if it is coming from one person. Everyone speaks differently! Dialogue in screenwriting is always designed to develop character and NOT to tell the VISUAL STORY. Pictures will do that. Pictures tell your story. Words don’t. Words lie. Use your dialogue to reveal how characters can be deceiving, exaggerated, warm, engaging, loving, etc. But don’t use words that could substitute for visuals. In screenwriting it’s better to SHOW something than to say it, showing something with visuals will make it a lot more dramatic. If you must resort to telling something in dialogue, try not to use clichéd methods. For example, a character asks a leading question which results in somebody spilling his guts about everything. That’s bad, that’s sloppy. Dialogue equals Time. Time is your enemy in a film, so don’t waste it with pointless dialogue if you don’t have to. Better yet, if you have something to say with dialogue, support that with visuals so the essence of the film is made more intense. Take “Silence of the Lambs.” The frightening villain has some very interesting things to say, but all of what he has to say is only a ploy so that he can scare, intimidate and motivate the people whom he perceives as his enemies. Remember his last lines in the film? Now that’s dialogue!

Making an opening scene really exciting is absolutely important if you want your film read and passed on to another reader higher up in the studio or production company. The opening scene should have some sort of great visual impact. It should suggest the beginning of your story. The plot may move quickly in the opening scenes in order to hook the audience. There’s time for explanation later. In the opening scene you ought to introduce at least one very significant character in a very theatrical manner. The opening scene usually shouldn’t be filled with lots of dialogue, unless it’s interesting and engaging, something that makes us want to hear more. It’s important that the opening scene relate in some way to the ending scene. In other words, the opening should suggest that by the time you get to the end of the film… the audience will be in for a good time. An opening scene should take advantage of the fact that the reader wants to be entertained so don’t use the philosophy “we will progress from the opening to the middle of the film.”

Now it looks like my own thoughts could use some better organization! Regardless, I feel there are a lot of good pointers in here. A lot that can get you on your way to writing your first feature length screenplay. Have fun.