*As an amazon associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
They say that the most important aspect to any given film is always the story.
This is one of the crucial things to understand and it applies to all entertainment. In this article we will dive into some top pointers to consider as a screenwriter when you work on your next screenplay.
Don’t worry so much about technique, and don’t worry so much about where to put the camera, or how to light. Worry about one thing, or think about one thing. Preoccupy yourself with how do you tell a story that’s really interesting, that you can get somebody not to walk out of the room right in the middle of your second act of your telling the story.
Steven Spielberg
You can have the best cinematography, the best cast, the best editing, the best lighting, but if the story falls flat, none of it matters. Focus on telling a compelling story that inspires you, that lets those creative thoughts flow.
1. Start with interesting and believable characters:
The best characters in any story are always the ones that you as the viewer (or reader) engage with. For your characters to be engaging you have to give your characters unique traits, desires, and flaws that make them, likeable or unlikeable, interesting and real. Give them backstory, give them motivations for acting the way they do. Take viewers on a rollercoaster of emotions that leave your viewers asking (begging for more). Or in the words of “Finding Nemo” director Andrew Stanton “give them 2+2 but don’t give them 4. Leave your audience putting the puzzle pieces together. Not so much that it scares the audience off but just enough that lets them ask questions. An audience that is emotionally engaged with your characters’ journey throughout the story makes for a happier and satisfied audience.
2. Setting clear goals and obstacles for your characters:
A character with no goal is like a zombie thats lost its desire for brains…and you never want that. Give your characters clear goals right from the very beginning and as time goes by start to gradually introduce problems that your protagonist or antagonist must face along the way. This can’t be easy obstacles either because heck there would be no story. The objectives need to push and drive the story forward. Adding these problems gives your story good set-ups for creating tension and ultimately leave your audience invested in your film.
3. Dialogue, dialogue, dialogue
Remember that with any film you have a very limited amount of time to say exactly it is you want to say. What i mean by this is your characters only have a very limited amount of screen time to get it is they want to say across to your audience, good or bad.
as with all your characters, anything that your character say, every single line that comes across needs to serve a purpose. It needs to drive a scene forward, convey key bits of information, or enhance your visual cues on screen. As with the previous points it needs to engage, feel authentic and genuine and reveal something to the audience about the character in question. There are multiple ways that effective dialogue can make for an interesting story and that is through advancing the plot, creating conflict, and portraying emotions and character traits.
4. Show, don’t tell
This one goes over and over in the back of my mind when jotting down ideas. How can i show the audience, because ultimately we are in the game of visual storytelling not written description. Sometimes on screen it is what is not being shown that is the key as well at times. It comes down to information. What is being shown and what is not. A screenwriter has the power to control how much of that information is given to the viewer. By giving viewers snippets of information its lets the audience engage with the film in a number of different ways. You can incite mood, feeling and tone through pacing and visual cues to get the message you are trying to convey across.
5.Structure is the backbone of a good story
When planning your screenplay, structure is a good thing to always pay attention to. It gives you an outline for the story. Some swear by a 3 act structure but there are always exceptions. Ultimately it comes down to your individual style. Some directors like Quentin Tarantino for instance like breaking this mould and move around the beats. This is evident in the likes of his film “The hateful eight”where he uses clever changing of the beats with almost novel like structure. A three-act structure follows the basic principle of a story set-up followed by a build up on conflicts in the second act and finally a resolution in the third act where all the scenes come to a conclusions and your film wraps up. By changing plot points and adding in extra twists and turns it makes for an exciting film. One that will make people want to watch more than once.
6. Master cinematic tension
I think i’ll leave this one up to the master of suspense himself to answer this one. This was how he explained tension during an AFI Master seminar.
Four people are sitting around a table, talking about baseball, whatever you like. Five minutes of it, very dull. Suddenly a bomb goes off, blows the people to smithereens. What do the audience have? Ten seconds of shock. Now take the same scene and tell the audience there’s a bomb under that table and will go off after five minutes. Well the whole emotion of the audience is totally different because you’ve given them that information that in five minutes time that bomb will go off, now that conversation about baseball becomes very vital because they’re saying to you don’t be ridiculous, stop talking about baseball there’s a bomb under there. You’ve got the audience working. Now the only difference is Why i’ve been guilty in the picture sabotage of making this error, i’ve never made it since. The bomb must never go off. Because if you do you work that audience into a state and then they’ll get angry because you haven’t provided them with any relief and that’s almost a must. So a foot touches the bomb somebody looks down and says my god bomb out of the window then it goes off, just in time.
Alfred Hitchcock
7. It’s about the drama regardless of genre
No body likes a film without drama. It’s what moves the story forward. No drama, no story. No story, no film. Make sure that in each scene of your film there is always a source for discontent. Place characters in uneasy situations. You can get creative with this one. It doesn’t necessarily have to be between characters, although that is commonly seen. It could be between a character and a location, or an internal conflict that your protagonist or antagonist, or side characters have to face. Every day we make decisions and star as the hero of our own film. We make decisions each and every day and your characters are no different. Put them in challenging and testing circumstances that will leave your audience on the edge of their seat.
8. Study your favourite screenplays and films
By going through and reading other screenplays you not only get different perspectives on ideas you also get to see different styles of writing and ways you can implement these techniques into your own style of writing. You can look at different aspects of other scripts that go into detail character development, the way they use dialogue and also the way they describe their scenes. By looking at scripts from another day you get first hand knowledge and insights as well as inspiration you can use going forward to enhance and give creative input into helping you with your own screenplay. It’s also a fun thing to do is take an existing film scene and see how you would interpret the scene on paper. What would that scene look like when written down. It’s from screen to script this time though.
9. What number rewrite are you on?
Like a novel goes through what seems like countless rewrites so too much a screenplay. It’s very unlikely that you go from opening your Scrivener template, or final draft software and nail out from opening title to end title in one go a well polished script. If you do congratulations to you. It will most likely go through a number of rewrites until it is production ready. Remember that the first draft is just the beginning. One of the things that gets often overlooked is the character arcs. Does my character grow or change throughout the story? Do they develop and learn? Is the theme and messages come across?
Look out for hotspots such as pacing and the overall flow of the story. This way when you do get feedback from trusted friends your mind is willing to take their critiques and turn them into valuable pieces of information to enhance your story.
10. Set writing goals
It always feels that extra bit of awesome when you finally can say that you finished XXXX number of pages or that you finally hit that beat in the script. Whether that goal is to hit Act two by. a certain writing deadline. It’s a great feeling and you should be proud when you hit those milestones. It gives you the drive to keep going. Stay strong and as always never stop writing!
Want to get some great reads? I recommend these books. I have all three of them on my shelf looking write back at me no pun intended. They are some of the best reads I have come across for the aspiring screenwriter and really enjoyed them.
If you are wanting to look at some other fantastic film making reads! that aren’t necessarily screenwriting you can check out 5 great filmmaking books.
