the woes of writing

Today in class we learned about the process of writing a screen play, which literally aligned perfectly with my schedule as today I’m supposed to write my script. Perfect timing! There are four parts of the process of writing a screenplay. The first thing to do is brainstorm, which I already did. Done. Then is to outline  the entire story and major plot points I would want to include in the film. Did that too! Then is to actually write the screenplay, which is what this blog post is about. The final step is to get feedback and make revisions to better the writing. 

[my notes from today’s class]

Anyways, after the lesson finished, I started to think about my own screenplay. I didn’t really know where to start so I started to research other screenplays from coming-of-age movies. I looked at the first 10 pages of the screenplay for Lady Bird, a coming of age film about the relationship between a mother and daughter. The article linked above not only included the actual screenplay, but also discussed why certain choices were used and how the screenplay developed tone and characters. The screenplay demonstrates how the film wants to develop the relationship between the two characters, which is something I want to portray in my film opening. The descriptions of the character’s actions demonstrate the tone of their characters and how they feel about other characters. The screenplay also describes how the character feels through their specific actions.

This screenplay example was really helpful and allowed me to start my own. I actually finished the entire screenplay in one sitting in class today, which is insane because normally I’m a pretty terrible writer. Doing the storyboard first, I think, was really helpful as it allowed me to visualize what I wanted to portray and then writing the screenplay further cemented how exactly I want to showcase my character’s thoughts and feelings. Here’s a screenshot of my script: