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What screenplay is everone writing right now?

Beanbag

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Beanbag
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Jun 7, 2003
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Okay, I started one for writing novels. For the interests in equal time for all endeavors, let's see what the screenwriters are doing.

Me? Recently finished the first draft Relative Evil, a "horror" adventure where a group of drug smugglers bite off more than they can chew when they hijack an RV driven by a pair of charming but ruthless killers. Despite thinking they are the toughest and coldest cats around, the smugglers discover that no matter how big and bad you might actually be, sooner or later you'll run into someone (or something) bigger and badder than you are.

I've let the first draft cool off for a couple weeks, then returned to look at it with fresh eyes. 118 pages long.

Your turn.

Beanbag
 
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I haven't a clue how to write a screenplay. Doesn't seem as intuitive as writing a story or book.
 
I might start writing: The Life Of Paul: A Wacky Historical Comedy about a poor Jewish Princeling with a big idea to spread peace and stability throughout a troubled region of the eastern edge of the Roman Empire in the time of Claudius and Nero. Of course it all backfires on him and he has to flee for his life. Hilarity ensues as he tries to lie his way out of zany situation after zany situation, culminating in the total destruction of the place he set out to stabilise.

More of a Tragi-Wacky Historical Comedy really...
 
Tiktaalik said:
I haven't a clue how to write a screenplay. Doesn't seem as intuitive as writing a story or book.
Click to expand...
Compared to a novel, it's surprisingly restrictive. No getting into the characters' thoughts. You're restricted to only being able to SAY or SHOW stuff. Voice-overs are considered poor form.

In a way, what you're writing is a blueprint or drawing for a story. Length is also fairly restricted, somewhere between 90 to 120 pages for a feature-length work. And depending on which "school" of screenwriting you are a disciple to, things have to happen at certain well-defined points in the screenplay, usually defined as "Acts." I (sort of) jokingly refer to a screenplay as a long-form haiku, since haikus have a fairly rigid structure and form that needs to be followed.

The general format for a screenplay is simple. A quick Google search for "screenplay format" will yield any number of online guides showing the accepted "standard" (used loosely here, as with most standards for screenwriting are set in silicone rubber to a certain degree). The first one I found was here:
http://2012.scriptfrenzy.org/howtoformatascreenplay

and it seems to be pretty much acceptable.

As an aside, there are two kinds of scripts: production scripts, and spec (for speculative) scripts. You write spec scripts to pitch and sell; production scripts are much more detailed with camera directions and production notes included, and are used ONLY for when you're ACTUALLY shooting the movie.

Spec scripts tend to be more general and are used to convey your story to a reader. You're trying to portray a visual medium with words on paper -- sorta like being forced to READ Shakespeare plays when they are actually intended to be SEEN performed.

Screenplay writing vs. novel writing can seem restricting. You can't indulge in flowery descriptive prose descriptions of settings, moods, etc. Then again, it's liberating to be able to only concentrate on dialog and action. But on the third hand, you spend a lot of time evaluating the number of pages versus the number of pages you have left versus what you have left in your story to convey. Takes a particularly ruthless mindset to be able to pare your story down to fit in 120 pages and still make it entertaining.

Beanbag
 
I started writing one called "My Best Friend"
Queen's "Best Friend" is the theme song
the premise is that Zombies realize that they need to go incognito or else humans will wipe them out.
So, the main two charachters are a couple of zombie room mates. they gotta go around acting normal, but still finding people to eat. They mostly prey on zonked out party goers. So they get high a lot too.
They meet a zombie hunter (minor celebs in this world) at a bar.
they live near each other and bond over a zombie killing video game.
etc etc
they all have to figure out what to do once it's revealed they're zombies.


All that said, I kinda wanna give up on it as there's too many zombie movies anyway
 
Thanks for the link. I'll have a look at it. Could be something fun to experiment with in the future if I take a wild hair.
 
Brainache said:
I might start writing: The Life Of Paul: A Wacky Historical Comedy about a poor Jewish Princeling with a big idea to spread peace and stability throughout a troubled region of the eastern edge of the Roman Empire in the time of Claudius and Nero. Of course it all backfires on him and he has to flee for his life. Hilarity ensues as he tries to lie his way out of zany situation after zany situation, culminating in the total destruction of the place he set out to stabilise.

More of a Tragi-Wacky Historical Comedy really...
Click to expand...

Just thinking about this, if I wanted to do it from the perspective of the Jerusalem Community instead of Paul, I think I'd call it : James and the Giant Preach

Can't see anything wrong with that...
 
I wrote a feature-length screenplay for a horror / urban fantasy movie, and I'm currently working on two scripts. One is an Aliens sequel and the other is a Call of Cthulhu story set on a lunar base in the near future. I find screenplays to be much easier to write than novels.
 
Vermonter said:
I wrote a feature-length screenplay for a horror / urban fantasy movie, and I'm currently working on two scripts. One is an Aliens sequel and the other is a Call of Cthulhu story set on a lunar base in the near future. I find screenplays to be much easier to write than novels.
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(my bold)

Out of curiosity, why do you think that is? I write novels & short stories; a screenplay seems absolutely daunting to me. I'm used to being able to exposit. What makes a screenplay easier for you?
 
Screenplays are blueprints for a visual and audio medium. You DON'T have to describe the entire environment like you MIGHT have to in a novel or short story. You include what's important for that scene's particular portion of the story, describe the important and relevant actions, and leave it at thet. There's also no issues with tagged/tagless dialog. EVERY line of dialog is explicitly assigned to a character.

One of the reasons you don't go into NEAR the level of description in a screenplay is because (assuming your screenplay gets produced -- BIG if) what appears on the screen will depend on the location(s) chosen and what the director and set designer/dresser want to put in.

Beanbag
 
I thought I had another post in this. Ah well. I enjoy writing screenplays because you only have to write down the information that is vital to the progress of the story - everything else is left up to the director.

You can be detailed, but unless you're writing for a specific director you know really well (such as yourself...) it's best to write ONLY the most pertinent information in regards to actions and dialogue. Emotional context can be intoned from the way actions are performed, but as a writer you aren't supposed to direct.

Oftentimes, the less detail for the environment, the better. It's quite liberating, but also a great challenge to be word-efficient. You only have to describe what the viewer sees, and that is a great deal of fun. Of course, if a writer enjoys being verbose and wordy a script isn't really for them, but I'd still suggest trying it! I use Celtx for my screenplays.
 
We could start a "best screenwriting software" discussion, but I'm not interested in cleaning up all the spit and blood.

When I'm developing the first draft, I --USUALLY-- use Scrivener, simply because it's easier to break the screenplay into easy-to-handle chunks. By using the left-hand column in Scrivener, the Binder, it gives me an outline form of the current structure of the screenplay.

Once I get the first draft done, I export it from Scrivener (using the Compile function) into Final Draft format, and subsequent revisions are done in Final Draft. Scrivener will export directly to a .fdx Final Draft file, but the formatting is slightly off. I use Final Draft because A) it's pretty much the industry standard; B) I like the ability to generate reports on different characters and scenes, giving me a better picture on what's going on in the screenplay; and C) Altering the formats and sections is a bit less clunky than Scrivener.

Before getting Final Draft, I used MS Word, then moved to OpenOffice Writer, both using a template I wrote with a set of custom macros to handle formatting.

And then there was the time I used a manual typewriter...

Beanbag
 
I use Scrivener for all my novels for up to fairly-polished-draft, then export into WORD for the remainder & for conversion (to .pdf, .mobi, .epub, etc.) for which I use various other programs. Point being, I like Scrivener a lot.
 
It's basically Avengers meets When Harry Met Sally and set in a middle school.
 
The biggest thing to remember about a screenplay that differs from a novel is your market. A novel is going to be read by your audience, whereas a screenplay is only ever going to be read by filmmakers of various types (from acquisition agents up to the cast and crew on set). Even when they "publish" screenplays in book form they're not real screenplays; they've been rewritten specifically for that purpose, usually from the final edit of the work.
 
I got about 2/3s through a World War One screenplay quite a long time ago (13 years now) in college, but coursework eventually bogged me down and I forgot most of my research. It's about a sociopathic BEF officer who becomes a war hero.

Might be a good time to dust it off and rewrite it for the centennial next year.
 
Here's my idea: The Stabbing Bar

It's like a bar where smoking is permitted by special dispensation (in a no smoking in bars jurisdiction), but instead it's stabbing that's permitted.

I haven't started it yet, because I don't know where to get hold of the hallucinogens.
 
hgc said:
Here's my idea: The Stabbing Bar

It's like a bar where smoking is permitted by special dispensation (in a no smoking in bars jurisdiction), but instead it's stabbing that's permitted.

I haven't started it yet, because I don't know where to get hold of the hallucinogens.
Click to expand...

Stab Club?
 
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