Re:How Do You Start A Script
Posted: 2007/08/15 15:00
Jacob Malewitz wrote: How do you guys start a script? I am moving away from doing the outlines because they kind of take the fun away. But I have heard to start with a synopsis. What is your strategy? Just from the initial idea, to the planning time, to the actual synop and outline, and then the script. How do you handle these aspects? I have changed it each time I write. Thanks for listening.<br><br>Post edited by: jfmalewitz, at: 2007/08/14 12:40
This is something I hope to discuss in Running Up That Hill in the near future, because I feel like I've finally blundered into a process that works for me pretty consistently.
I tend to think through the story as a background process as I go about life doing whatever. I'll jot down a handful of notes when key scenes or lines of dialogue or whatever hit me.
Then, when I'm ready to tackle the story, I get out my trusty spiral notebook, and write a series of numbers, one per line, for each page in the story. So, for the stuff I've been doing lately, which is short pieces for anthologies, it's like 1 to 8 for an 8 page story.
I then jot down the key action or moment for each page, next to the numbers, as a map to help me from getting lost as I write.
Next, still working with a pen and paper, I break the first page down into numbered panels (1-1, 1-2, etc., which is officially known as the Drewey Decimal system in honor of its inventor, Drew Melbourne). For each panel, I write down the key line of dialogue or action or setting description or whatever -- just whatever is the focus of that panel, what makes it necessary to move the story along.
Finally, after I've got my roadmap for page 1 done on paper, I get on the computer and start scripting it. And once I finish page 1, it's back to the spiral notebook to figure out page 2. And the process repeats itself like that till I'm done with the first draft.
Although I by no means invented this, it is for me a true revelation and an immense boon to my productivity. Because it saves me from the thing I hate and fear most about writing: sitting at the computer, fingers on the keyboard, with no earthly idea what I'm doing.
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