How to Write a First Draft of a Screenplay
An Entertainment Script: Idea Through First Draft
Jack Adams
REPRINTED WITH THE PERMISSION OF CREATIVE SCREENWRITING MAGAZINE
The Idea
Someone said, "In the beginning was the word," but when it comes to the entertainment industry in the beginning is the idea. This idea can be in many forms, and can come from any person, anywhere, anytime. The idea might start with a writer or a producer; it may come to a director or an actor; it might even begin with an agent, an executive, or a friend/family member/acquaintance of these people.
An idea may burst into someone's consciousness while jogging, taking a shower, or relaxing in the Jacuzzi triggered by something that appeared in a newspaper, magazine article, novel, manuscript or stage play. It may be something heard on the evening news, a talk show, a recent film or television episode. Someone may even come up with this idea after reading a script.
An "idea" can be as fully formed as a two-hour story with compelling characters, an interesting plot and a universal theme, or it can be as basic as a situation scene, crisis, person, problem or location. Shane Black, the screenwriter who (among other things) created the characters in the Lethal Weapon series of films, has said the beginnings of his first adventure for Officers Murtaugh and Riggs were not all-encompassing. He didn't know everything about the story or the characters when he started out, but he knew he had a man standing on the edge of a roof, handcuffed to another guy, when the first one jumped off the roof. Additionally, he had someone at the bottom of a swimming pool full of water, with a pool cover over the pool, trapping a man under the surface of the water. He said he had a couple of other critical scenes, and had to come up with enough story to tie the scenes together.
Let's compare this genesis to another upcoming film which may or may not be accorded the same success Lethal Weapon has found. What if someone in Hollywood sat down and said "Let's see, Jurassic Park has made a ton of money... and Whoopi Goldberg is very popular since Sister Act... Why don't I combine them and come up with an even more profitable movie? Okay, let's see... a dinosaur in a convent? No. How about a singing dinosaur? Nah, Geffen's making 'Barney: The Movie... Let's see... Lethal Weapon does very well, they're shooting number four... I've got it! What if I made Whoopi... a cop... and her partner could be... (wait for it) a dinosaur!"
It's up for grabs whether T-Rex will do well at the box office.(ScreenStyle.com note: T-Rex was the most expensive movie ever made that went straight to video.) But of course, crystal-ball-gazing with Whoopi's career is dangerous business.
William Goldman, the screenwriter of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, is perhaps best known for the oft-quoted line from his non-fiction book on the entertainment industry, Adventures in the Screen Trade. Mr. Goldman, having written many novels and scripts in addition to the story of Butch and Sundance, summed up his experience with cinematic professionals by saying "Nobody in Hollywood knows anything for sure." And unfortunately that's the truth. Show business is an industry built on personal opinion; there are few rules. If your personal opinion happens to agree with a majority of the people who buy movie tickets, rent home videos, subscribe to cable channels or patronize pay-per-view, you're a genius and have a big career. But if you look into your crystal ball and say too often "Ah, Whoopi hasn't carried a movie on her own and nun comedies don't make any money," your career may be smaller or shorter-lived.
An idea is not always the same thing time after time, but it is always a first thought. Ideas have no single definition, but they do have one thing in common-they all make the person having the idea think their idea is a good idea. Everyone may not agree with that assessment but no one sits down and says "Let's see, what's the worst idea I can think of for a movie?"
In addition to the mirthful melodies and memories the film "The Producers" recalls for us, it also illustrates the process an idea goes through in Hollywood. First, someone needs an idea, which will become a movie, which will make a lot of money. Because if the person who needs the idea doesn't find one which makes a lot of money, their career is on the way to being over. No matter whether you're a writer, producer, agent, actor, director or executive, a show business career is predicated upon having ideas which generate income. You're only as good as your next idea. If you find a consistent string of profitable ideas you have a long career. But if your string is not so consistent, it's not so long. It's kind of a show-biz management plan with 'three-strikes-you're-out" and no balls.
So someone needs to find an idea, and someone else has an idea. The idea person tries to convince the person who needs the idea (the "investor") that the idea will make the investor a lot of money. Don’t be misled by the term "investor", because it’s not always money which is invested. It might be time or interest in the project. It might be a network of connections, or access to people who have money or connections to invest. It is usually personal effort to convince others of the idea's merit which the investor invests. No matter what the situation, no idea immediately becomes a profitable movie. Time must be invested, interest in the idea must be created and cultivated. Interest must grow so others will become interested in the idea. In the entertainment industry this is called "generating heat" on the project. If you can generate enough "heat" about your idea, people will take notice. And the more heat you generate, the more people you excite, and the more people you excite, the faster the heat will be generated.
The person with the idea is a salesperson, convincing others of the benefits of this idea. The more the idea sounds like something people have seen before, the easier it is for them to accept this new idea. If this kind of idea has succeeded before, there's reason to believe it will succeed again. And if it's succeeded before in a big way, there's a better chance it will succeed yet again this time, and perhaps even bigger and better than before. Or perhaps a little more profitably than before. Or at least it won't be a complete failure if something like it has succeeded in the past
But regardless of where the idea comes from or to whom the idea occurs, the key to every entertainment script is this: someone thought this idea would make a good script. And the definition of a good script is this: one which will make money at the theatrical box office by selling a lot of tickets, at the video store by renting tens of thousands of cassettes over and over again, or by being exhibited on cable networks and pay-per-view channels. No idea is a good idea unless it will make money for Hollywood.
Pitch It
According to the Robert Altman film The Player, the idea should be expressed in "25 words or less." If you haven't seen the movie, please rent it immediately, watch it, and take notes. It is a documentary about how Hollywood works. There is not one lie in The Player. Yes, unfortunately, they do kill writers. The essence of the idea process, as shown in The Player, is the pitch. When pitching, you have to get the project across verbally, quickly and well.
If you've seen The Player, you probably remember Buck Henry (the actual screenwriter of the original movie The Graduate) sitting in a fictional movie executive's office pitching a sequel to The Graduate. It's hilarious. You may also remember other pitches being made during the course of the film, some of which were not very appealing. But most of the pitches were very concise; they all attempted to convey the essence of the project as quickly as possible.
A good pitch does not dwell on details. Give the broad stokes, the highlights, the stuff someone needs to know right away. The first thing someone needs to know is the genre, the type of story. If someone is pitching an idea and it sounds funny, our instinct is to laugh. But because the difference between comedy and tragedy is whether you slip on the banana peel or I do, tell me up front whether or not I'm supposed to laugh. Put my mind in the mood; tell me what I'm going to hear. But don't worry about the title; it's going to change, perhaps many times before the film is released.
Don't do the glib "X meets Y" pitch, unless you're sure that's the only way the person you're pitching to can process your idea. Terminator meets Forrest Gump, Malice meets White Palace and so on is quick, but empty. Die Hard on a _______,Die Hard in a _______...Perhaps the Die Hard formula originated with Green Eggs and Ham: "I plan to kill them on a bus, I plan to kill them with big fuss, I plan to kill them in a dam, I plan to kill them, Sam-I-am." (Apologies to the good Doctor, smiling down from above.) Lethal Weapon meets Sister Act. Certainly people pitch this way, but anyone can do this without thinking very hard about it. We need specifics about this particular project, this character, their problem. Why it's worthy of attention, and how it's going to get attention.
The pitch continues with the idea we've been bandying about Hollywood. The one sentence, 25-words-or-less summary (called a premise). Whose story is it, who's the main character? The big question is, why are they interesting? What's the critical aspect of their character which is going to eventually warrant two hours of reading a script, sitting in a theatre or renting a home video? What's the protagonist's problem? Movies are exercises in problem-solving; we go to the theatre to watch this person-with-a-problem try to solve it over the course of two hours. As we watch, we think to ourselves "If this were a problem in my life, would this be the way I would attempt to solve it? Is there a better way for this person to solve this problem? Is there anything in the way this person is trying to solve their problem which might apply to any problem I might have in my own life?" We're looking for solutions to problems in our own lives.
Young people love to watch Pee Wee's Big Adventure, where the hero's problem is recovering his lost bicycle. Not something adults are very concerned about, although with the rise of carjackings it wouldn't be too difficult to realign the hero’s problem into a more adult situation. Nonetheless, we watch a film because we care about the problem, and we want the hero to find a solution to it. So we start by coming up with a one-sentence problem, that 25-words-or-less summary of the two-hour story. That one-sentence premise might mention or at least hint at the villain, the bad guy/girl in the black hat ("antagonist") who's causing the problem for the protagonist. Regardless of titles and job descriptions, all stories seem to be some version of the struggle between good and evil, to some degree.
The key to any good story is to present conflict as frequently as possible. The more pronounced, well-stated, well-developed and all-encompassing the conflict, the more interest will be generated as a consequence. So that 25-words-or-less premise, that one-sentence summary of the conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist, should contain as much conflict (or at 1east the clear promise of it) as possible. Give more than a little thought to what the conflict will be all about in your story. A stolen bicycle may not be enough, but working to solve the mystery of a stolen bicycle and then struggling to locate and defeat the thief may be sufficiently interesting for a greater number of people. Raising the stakes beyond a bicycle to something of even greater value may make the story of interest to an even greater number of people, which will help generate larger box-office numbers.
Now that you've established the basic conflict, you want to add a little bit more detail. You want to slightly increase the amount of information you'll tell people about your project. Don't overpower them with a two-hour story; no one's got that much concentration or interest in your project at this point. Develop your 25-words-or-less sentence into a slightly bigger three-sentence summary. Before protesting about the need to break out of the three-act paradigm, remember that's exactly how Hollywood speaks and works. This process is how a project will be pitched to create interest.
You've heard this three-sentence summary before: it's the standard "Boy Meets Girl, Boy Loses Girl, Boy Gets Girl" formula. You've seen it hundreds of times, and a recent successful romantic comedy was originally entitled Boy Meets Girl. But during the script's five-year development/rewriting process, Rob and Nora decided to retitle the script When Harry Met Sally. Stop and think: almost every romantic story you've ever seen, whether comedy, drama or fantasy, still uses that standard formula: Boy Meets Girl, then Boy Loses Girl, and finally Boy Gets Girl. You can change genders or even species, but it's still the same old story: a fight for love and glory, a case of do or die, the fundamental things still apply, ever more so on the Hollywood treadmill of profit-or-die, as time goes by.
Sure, we keep trying to find new twists on the old formula, but it still works: Boy Meets Girl, Who Turns Out To Be A Boy, Who The First Boy Then Loses, But The First Boy Misses The Second Boy, So The First Boy Gets The Second Boy, Who Continues To Act Like The Girl. Whether it's M Butterfly, The Crying Game or Victor Victoria, gender-bending stories still use the same tried-and-true formula which almost every romance has used in the past.
Developing The Idea
Expand the idea into a three-sentence summary of how the conflict starts, increases to a critical point, then resolves by the hero removing, reducing or solving the problem. Decide on the three-sentence summary which tells the beginning, middle and end of the story. Not in any great detail, but just enough to understand how the story starts out, how things develop, and how they finally resolve by the end. It gives a few more than 25 words, but add detail gradually. Keep the process under control. Watch any successful commercial film: the two hours will probably be divided into the beginning 25% (a half hour), the middle 50% (an hour), and the last 25% (another half hour). In other words, basic introductory material requires the first thirty minutes. During the middle sixty minutes, conflict is consistently increasing. In the last thirty minutes, the conflict comes to a head and is resolved by the hero with a happy ending. Set your watch by this plan. Take Home Alone, the most successful comedy ever made (so far). In the first half hour, you're introduced to the protagonist, Kevin. Meet his family, learn about his environment, find out his problem has to do with that family environment. Kevin wishes his family was not around because he can never get any peace and quiet. What happens a quarter of the way into the film? Kevin has been banished to the attic bedroom and wishes his family would just go away. So when he wakes up the next morning (at about minute thirty), he finds his wish has come true. That's why his line works so well:
"I made my family disappear." Be careful what you wish for, Kevin; you may get it.
The next sixty minutes (middle hour) shows how Kevin's life gets a lot more complicated because of his wish, due in large part to the conflict caused by the antagonists, The Wet Bandits. This conflict consistently escalates until we're 75% through the story. That middle 50% where most scripts fail, because it's tough to keep the conflict increasing during the "deadly middle" unless you've chosen a situation where there's enough conflict to sustain the story.
In the last half hour, Kevin finds and implements the solution to his problem, defeats the antagonists, and is reunited with his family. The formula has stayed intact: boy meets family (25%), boy loses family (50%), boy gets family (25%). Find a brief sentence for each of these overall segments; save the details for later.
Next, expand each of the three sentences into a short paragraph giving a little more detail about each of them. In the first sentence, "Boy Meets Girl":
What boy? Why do we like him? What girl? What is it about her which makes us interested in her story? What is it about each of these two people which we see in ourselves? Why would we be willing to give up two hours of our lives to watch their lives? How do this boy and girl meet? What in their relationship promises increasing conflict as the story goes on? What aspect of their conflict do we think will be worth watching? This information should be contained in the beginning of the story, translated into the first half hour of a two-hour script, so expand that first-of-three sentences in a paragraph consisting of three, four or (at the most) five sentences which summarizes the action of the first half hour (first 25% of the script), while at the same time giving a little more detail about the beginning than simply the one sentence itself.
Then, write a second paragraph which summarizes the action in the middle hour. This second paragraph should only be three, four or (at the most) five sentences long, and should give a little more information beyond "Boy Loses Girl." Since "Boy Loses Girl" is what usually happens at the end of the middle of the story (about page 90), "Boy Meets Girl" is actually the result of the past hour-and-a-half. Use the three or four sentences of the second paragraph to show what leads to the break up. Not a lot of detail, but enough to understand in a general way how the conflict is going to escalate meaningfully, unrelentingly and unavoidably until that critical point where all seems lost.
That "all-is-lost point" is the end of act two, which signals the end of the middle and the beginning of the end. It's also the end of the second paragraph explaining the second-of-three sentences. Next expand your third sentence into a third paragraph also three-four-or-five sentences long. This paragraph gives a little more detail about the third and final sentence: "Boy Gets Girl." What has the hero's strength been throughout this story? What lesson has he or she finally learned? How does that lesson give the protagonist the key for finally defeating the antagonist? The happy ending is "Boy Gets Girl," but the third paragraph tells how it's going to be possible to resolve the conflict of the past hour-and-a-half in a meaningful and convincing way. The last sentence of the third paragraph is the actual "Boy Gets Girl" happy ending, after which everybody leaves the theatre smiling because all turned out well in the end.
Writing a romantic story is more difficult than a single protagonist/single antagonist story, because in any romantic genre the two romantic individuals are each other's antagonist. The conflict is not as straightforward as the white hat/black hat conflict, where one character is clearly good and the other is clearly bad. In a romantic story he's her antagonist, she's his antagonist, they go through the battle to learn why they should be together, and being together is the happily-ever-after ending.
This project has been summarized three different ways: a one-sentence premise, a three-sentence beginning/middle/end with a little more detail, and three-paragraphs with the most detail so far. Next, find out how the details begin to work themselves out chronologically by writing a fourth summary with still a little more detail. In the days before computers, writers scribbled ideas for scenes on 3x5 cards, thumbtacked them on a corkboard and moved the cards around until they seemed in the right order. The problem was, this writer could never afford a room big enough to be able to stand far enough away from the corkboard to be able to see all the cards at one time. It doesn't help to be smashed up against a big bulletin board, staring at a few cards on the end of your nose, trying to figure what the whole story is about. You can't see the big picture if you're smashed up against it. There had to be an easier way, and there is, with or without a computer.
Writing The Script
After writing and rewriting the three summaries until they're as effective as can be, take one sheet of paper and number the lines 1-40 down one side of the page. Since most sheets only have about 33 lines, squeeze in a few extras; it's okay to cheat. Maintaining the 25%-50%-25% ratio, the first ten lines will be act one, the next twenty lines will be act two, and the last ten lines will be act three. Line 10 is the first act break (turning point),which signals the-end-of-the-beginning of the story and the-beginning-of-the-middle. Line 30 is the second act break, the end-of-the-middle and the-beginning-of-the-end. Act one is ten lines long, or 25% of the forty lines. Act three is also ten lines long, or another 25% of the forty lines. Deadly act two is twenty lines long, fully 50% of the story. The ratio of story material to structure is maintained.
The three-paragraph summary has 3-5 sentences in its first paragraph. Write the last sentence of that first paragraph verbatim on line 10. That's the first turning point, the act break at the end of act one. It's worded exactly the same in the 40-line scene outline as it was in the three-paragraph summary because it's a signpost, a milestone; it signifies you've finished telling the beginning of the story. Take the other 2-4 sentences from the first paragraph and insert them into lines 1-9 of the 40-line scene outline. If two or three lines on the 40-line scene outline are necessary to explain what happens in one of the paragraph-sentences, that's okay, use them. There's room to expand, and the purpose of this step is to add a little more detail. Fill up as many of the first nine lines in this 40-line scene outline as are needed to tell the beginning of the story.
When the basic steps of what happens in the first half-hour are told, move on to the second paragraph summary. Take the last sentence of the second paragraph and plug it into line 30 of the 40-line scene outline as the second act turning point. Take the other 2-4 sentences of the second paragraph and plug them into lines 41-29 of the 40-line scene outline. More than the original 2-4 sentences will be needed to express act two's story and character information, so use as many of lines 41-29 as are required.
The blanks on the 40-line scene outline are filling up with story and character information. When the middle of the story has been expressed in broad strokes, take stock. There may be blank lines in act one, and there probably will be some holes among lines 11-29 in act two. That's okay; say everything needed to be said in order to get across the basic conflict between the protagonist and antagonist, and don't worry about the rest yet. Move on to the third paragraph.
Plug the last sentence of the third paragraph into line 40 of the 40-line scene outline; that's the happy ending. Take the other 2-4 sentences of the third paragraph summary and plug them into lines 31-39 of the 40-line scene outline, expanding into additional blank lines of 31-39 for necessary character, plot and thematic information. When all three paragraphs have been converted into a 40-line scene outline. some of lines 1-40 may still be blank. That's okay; add only the most important details. But if there are significantly less than forty lines completed, the protagonist/antagonist conflict may need to be strengthened in order to support a full two-hours of script.
The reason 40 is a magic number is because 120 pages (which according to Hollywood takes 120 minutes) divided among 40 scenes gives an average scene length of three pages (three minutes) per scene. Some scenes will be longer than three minutes and some shorter, but it will average out to three per scene. If 30 lines will summarize the story, that's an average of four minutes per scene. While a four-minute scene once in a while may be effective, this continuous pace will usually slow things down quite a bit. Find the rule of thumb by deciding how long you can hold your breath. Four minutes? Then you can probably write a string of 30 four-minute scenes well. But most people can't hold their breath for four minutes, so an average scene length of three minutes per scene will probably be more comfortable.
This average depends on the genre of story being told, but the 40-line scene outline is a benchmark test of the length and strength of the material. It's not a rule written in stone; the material will be adjusted and rewritten, so don't worry too much about it. But if it only takes 20 lines to tell the story, six minutes per scene will probably be too plodding a pace. A 60-line scene outline will give an average of two pages per scene, and that's probably too choppy. Somewhere close to 40 lines in a scene outline will be a good first step toward finding the detail of the story.
A closer examination of the material in the 40-line scene outline yields important results. If all the information needed to tell this story can be summarized in significantly less than 40 lines, if the main conflict between the protagonist and antagonist can be conveyed in perhaps 27 or so lines, it means approximately 13 lines of material are lacking in the structure of the story. Re-examine the protagonist/antagonist conflict, strengthening it until it can't or doesn't need to be strengthened any more. Is it truly compelling enough to last for two hours? If so, the remaining 13 blank lines have to be completed in some other way. This is where a subplot may help.
The main reason subplots exist at all (other than to fill blank space), is to give additional insight into the character of the protagonist which is not available by watching his or her interaction with the antagonist. If a police officer is chasing a drug dealer, the warm/human/emotional side of the cop probably won't come out very often while he/she is fighting the evil drug lord. Therefore, a romantic interest or family-member subplot is created to illustrate the more human aspects of the protagonist's character. Those aspects are most easily revealed by means of interaction with a secondary, more sympathetic character. So fill in the blank 13 lines with a beginning, middle and end of the subplot selected for your protagonist's interaction with the secondary character, then spread this information among acts one, two and three.
Once the 40-line scene outline is completed, the wholesale "writing" begins. Many people think "writing" is done on a typewriter, computer keyboard, yellow pad or tape recorder, but these media merely provide a place where writing can be recorded, not where it is done. Writing is done in the head; that's why the process of writing has been described as "stare at a blank piece of paper until drops of blood appear on your forehead" or "Sit down and open a vein." That's why writing is so hard; it's thinking, organizing and reorganizing until things make sense. And it's not really the writing, but the rewriting which reveals the way story and characters work better, more convincingly, more compellingly. So all the typing, scribbling or dictating is merely recording what's been created so far, having first wrestled with the material mentally for a significant amount of time. Even though it feels "busy" to type, scribble or dictate, those processes are only busywork. It's not really writing unless it's first been beaten out in someone's head.
When someone says "I can only write when I'm in the mood," it's a clear sign they're not yet operating on a professional writing level. Professionals have to write regardless of how they feel; writing is their day job. The more you write, the more you'll find you can write whenever and wherever you need to, "inspired" or not. The ratio is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. Apply the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair. Et cetera, et cetera.
Expand the 40-line scene outline into a detailed outline. Take line #1 and write as much about that first scene as is known. Don't write dialog yet, but put down all the plot, character and thematic information known about that first scene. Be sure the scene contains conflict, or at least the potential for conflict later on in the structure, made possible by what's established here. Write as many sentences as needed. Make the process feel like "writing."
After everything's been said about that first scene, go on to line #2; write all the details about that scene. No dialog yet, but indicate everything which has to happen in order to move the story forward and give critical information about character. Finish with scene two, go on to line #3 and repeat the process. Then line #4 and so on, until every scene of the 40-line scene outline is written in as much detail as is known. This will provide a multi-page, detailed outline of the plot, and if you've considered the protagonist's problem long arid well, you will also have significant character development presented here. The key is ever-present conflict. Exposition is deadly; avoid it whenever possible. Communicate through conflict.
This conversion of the 40-line scene outline into a detailed outline encourages many more words onto paper by far, than during any of the other previous steps. By waiting until now to record all the details which have consciously and consistently been avoided prior to this point, it becomes apparent the morass of information swimming around in the writer's head has gone through a mental organizing, summarizing and discarding process. The details have been sorted through, and clear choices can now be made about what is really important to this project, and what can be gotten rid of because it is not as important as initially believed. "Gathering notes" or "doing research" prior to plunging into a project makes the project a lot harder to write, because the pile you've created must eventually be sorted through. As you "gather notes" and "do research", this pile gets taller with no direction, discretion or ability to discern whether a particular fact is important or merely interesting. Writers suffer from terminal curiosity, but this is not an effective structural or writing technique. Research, notes and curiosity are tools, but not the end product. They must be incorporated into a larger document and system which must be planned and created first, not after the fact.
The process presented here insists the writer not sit down at the beginning of the project and immediately jump in by writing at the top left corner of page one "It was a dark and stormy night." Plan what's going to be written, and at what speed it's going to be written, before doing anything else. Set certain, prearranged points along the way to stop and monitor progress, to see what's working and what's not working. Adjust the course as the project develops. This is much easier than sitting in front of the keyboard struggling with an opening sentence like 'The night was...", as Billy Crystal did in the first scene of Throw Mama From The Train.
A script should have a lot of "white space." Readers are put off by scripts that are too "black," having lots of letters, words, sentences and paragraphs. In script writing, less is more. Think haiku, minimalist painting or Fred Astaire's dancing. It doesn't look difficult until you try it. Make if look easy on the page. In sculpture we don't marvel at how many whacks the hammer and chisel make, but admire what's left. Hack and slash at the script. Make it lean, clean and pristine. A script is not a document which records every single detail of what will be seen on the screen and heard from the speakers. A script is a blueprint, an initial shorthand effort to suggest what will finally be placed on film. So leave room for the other creative team members and crew to make their contributions.
A scriptwriter creates characters, the situation in which they find themselves, and the conflict through which they're going to work for a happy ending. That's done by indicating what these people say and what these people do. What they think is the province of a novel; scripts get inside characters' heads only by the words which come out of their mouths and the actions which their bodies perform. The rest will be decided by many other people later in the creative process.
The best way to decide what's appropriate to include in a script and what's not appropriate is to read good scripts. Read five good scripts to have a basic idea of what a script is; read fifty good scripts for the concept to become more clear; after reading five hundred scripts, things may start to make sense. It's hard to find fifty good scripts (let alone 500), but the more we learn, the more we realize we don't know.
When the detailed outline is finished, expand it into a first draft. Despite the common misperception that this is the hard, first step where the real writing is done, expanding a detailed outline into a first draft is actually one of the easiest steps in the entire process. When the text of the detailed outline is reformatted into screenplay typing style, all that remains is to insert whatever dialog is necessary to get across story, character and thematic information. This development process practically guarantees an automatic 120 pages of typing filled with necessary information and fraught with conflict.
Anyone who thinks or says "I know how to write a good story, I just can't write good dialog," will have a much easier time writing dialog using this process than with many other methods. The reason dialog may seem difficult to write is because the scene being struggled with probably contains insufficient conflict. If two characters are fighting about something (verbally, emotionally, physically), it's much easier to put words in their mouths. Dialog is difficult to do well when its function is to merely communicate information. Exposition ("laying pipe") tries to manufacture conflict when none exists. It is doomed writing; emotionless information lacks appeal. This conflict-in-every-scene goal should be accomplished as early as possible in the process of developing the project.
Each step of this process should be developed in front of a writers peer group, or at least bounced off one or more other writers to get feedback about the work. Writers who think they should work in a vacuum are probably antisocial and nonverbal by nature. That's not how it works in Hollywood. Writers have to give good meeting, so it helps to practice social skills with a peer group. Get feedback about the project as it's being developed, and the project will be much better because the material's been tested on other writers at each step along the way. Don't test it on civilians; they don't buy scripts, they buy tickets.
What if a writer spends six months in a cave typing away, then stumbles out with 120 pages, only to find they're 120 pages of not-so-good writing? It happens all the time. Writers are not the best judges of their own work, but they do know about the work of other writers, because it's the same work they do themselves. Writers are personally, emotionally invested in their own projects, so test material on other writers as it's being developed and it will be much stronger writing by the time it gets into first draft form.
Professional-minded writers don't usually consider a script ready to be seen until it's at least in its third draft. It would be a lot easier if we could figure out what's wrong the first time and then get it right, but unfortunately the process doesn't usually work that way. The first 120 pages merely gets it on the paper, but not necessarily well. Rewriting does that. Get notes from trusted people who know what they're talking about, then rewrite.
When the peer group says the draft is finally ready to be seen after a number of rewrites, test this supposed "first draft" on a professional source. Someone whose job it is to recognize scripts which are ready, and to differentiate them from scripts which are only promising. When the professional approves, the draft may finally be ready to go out to a representative or production entity.
Jack Adams
REPRINTED WITH THE PERMISSION OF CREATIVE SCREENWRITING MAGAZINE
The Idea
Someone said, "In the beginning was the word," but when it comes to the entertainment industry in the beginning is the idea. This idea can be in many forms, and can come from any person, anywhere, anytime. The idea might start with a writer or a producer; it may come to a director or an actor; it might even begin with an agent, an executive, or a friend/family member/acquaintance of these people.
An idea may burst into someone's consciousness while jogging, taking a shower, or relaxing in the Jacuzzi triggered by something that appeared in a newspaper, magazine article, novel, manuscript or stage play. It may be something heard on the evening news, a talk show, a recent film or television episode. Someone may even come up with this idea after reading a script.
An "idea" can be as fully formed as a two-hour story with compelling characters, an interesting plot and a universal theme, or it can be as basic as a situation scene, crisis, person, problem or location. Shane Black, the screenwriter who (among other things) created the characters in the Lethal Weapon series of films, has said the beginnings of his first adventure for Officers Murtaugh and Riggs were not all-encompassing. He didn't know everything about the story or the characters when he started out, but he knew he had a man standing on the edge of a roof, handcuffed to another guy, when the first one jumped off the roof. Additionally, he had someone at the bottom of a swimming pool full of water, with a pool cover over the pool, trapping a man under the surface of the water. He said he had a couple of other critical scenes, and had to come up with enough story to tie the scenes together.
Let's compare this genesis to another upcoming film which may or may not be accorded the same success Lethal Weapon has found. What if someone in Hollywood sat down and said "Let's see, Jurassic Park has made a ton of money... and Whoopi Goldberg is very popular since Sister Act... Why don't I combine them and come up with an even more profitable movie? Okay, let's see... a dinosaur in a convent? No. How about a singing dinosaur? Nah, Geffen's making 'Barney: The Movie... Let's see... Lethal Weapon does very well, they're shooting number four... I've got it! What if I made Whoopi... a cop... and her partner could be... (wait for it) a dinosaur!"
It's up for grabs whether T-Rex will do well at the box office.(ScreenStyle.com note: T-Rex was the most expensive movie ever made that went straight to video.) But of course, crystal-ball-gazing with Whoopi's career is dangerous business.
William Goldman, the screenwriter of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, is perhaps best known for the oft-quoted line from his non-fiction book on the entertainment industry, Adventures in the Screen Trade. Mr. Goldman, having written many novels and scripts in addition to the story of Butch and Sundance, summed up his experience with cinematic professionals by saying "Nobody in Hollywood knows anything for sure." And unfortunately that's the truth. Show business is an industry built on personal opinion; there are few rules. If your personal opinion happens to agree with a majority of the people who buy movie tickets, rent home videos, subscribe to cable channels or patronize pay-per-view, you're a genius and have a big career. But if you look into your crystal ball and say too often "Ah, Whoopi hasn't carried a movie on her own and nun comedies don't make any money," your career may be smaller or shorter-lived.
An idea is not always the same thing time after time, but it is always a first thought. Ideas have no single definition, but they do have one thing in common-they all make the person having the idea think their idea is a good idea. Everyone may not agree with that assessment but no one sits down and says "Let's see, what's the worst idea I can think of for a movie?"
In addition to the mirthful melodies and memories the film "The Producers" recalls for us, it also illustrates the process an idea goes through in Hollywood. First, someone needs an idea, which will become a movie, which will make a lot of money. Because if the person who needs the idea doesn't find one which makes a lot of money, their career is on the way to being over. No matter whether you're a writer, producer, agent, actor, director or executive, a show business career is predicated upon having ideas which generate income. You're only as good as your next idea. If you find a consistent string of profitable ideas you have a long career. But if your string is not so consistent, it's not so long. It's kind of a show-biz management plan with 'three-strikes-you're-out" and no balls.
So someone needs to find an idea, and someone else has an idea. The idea person tries to convince the person who needs the idea (the "investor") that the idea will make the investor a lot of money. Don’t be misled by the term "investor", because it’s not always money which is invested. It might be time or interest in the project. It might be a network of connections, or access to people who have money or connections to invest. It is usually personal effort to convince others of the idea's merit which the investor invests. No matter what the situation, no idea immediately becomes a profitable movie. Time must be invested, interest in the idea must be created and cultivated. Interest must grow so others will become interested in the idea. In the entertainment industry this is called "generating heat" on the project. If you can generate enough "heat" about your idea, people will take notice. And the more heat you generate, the more people you excite, and the more people you excite, the faster the heat will be generated.
The person with the idea is a salesperson, convincing others of the benefits of this idea. The more the idea sounds like something people have seen before, the easier it is for them to accept this new idea. If this kind of idea has succeeded before, there's reason to believe it will succeed again. And if it's succeeded before in a big way, there's a better chance it will succeed yet again this time, and perhaps even bigger and better than before. Or perhaps a little more profitably than before. Or at least it won't be a complete failure if something like it has succeeded in the past
But regardless of where the idea comes from or to whom the idea occurs, the key to every entertainment script is this: someone thought this idea would make a good script. And the definition of a good script is this: one which will make money at the theatrical box office by selling a lot of tickets, at the video store by renting tens of thousands of cassettes over and over again, or by being exhibited on cable networks and pay-per-view channels. No idea is a good idea unless it will make money for Hollywood.
Pitch It
According to the Robert Altman film The Player, the idea should be expressed in "25 words or less." If you haven't seen the movie, please rent it immediately, watch it, and take notes. It is a documentary about how Hollywood works. There is not one lie in The Player. Yes, unfortunately, they do kill writers. The essence of the idea process, as shown in The Player, is the pitch. When pitching, you have to get the project across verbally, quickly and well.
If you've seen The Player, you probably remember Buck Henry (the actual screenwriter of the original movie The Graduate) sitting in a fictional movie executive's office pitching a sequel to The Graduate. It's hilarious. You may also remember other pitches being made during the course of the film, some of which were not very appealing. But most of the pitches were very concise; they all attempted to convey the essence of the project as quickly as possible.
A good pitch does not dwell on details. Give the broad stokes, the highlights, the stuff someone needs to know right away. The first thing someone needs to know is the genre, the type of story. If someone is pitching an idea and it sounds funny, our instinct is to laugh. But because the difference between comedy and tragedy is whether you slip on the banana peel or I do, tell me up front whether or not I'm supposed to laugh. Put my mind in the mood; tell me what I'm going to hear. But don't worry about the title; it's going to change, perhaps many times before the film is released.
Don't do the glib "X meets Y" pitch, unless you're sure that's the only way the person you're pitching to can process your idea. Terminator meets Forrest Gump, Malice meets White Palace and so on is quick, but empty. Die Hard on a _______,Die Hard in a _______...Perhaps the Die Hard formula originated with Green Eggs and Ham: "I plan to kill them on a bus, I plan to kill them with big fuss, I plan to kill them in a dam, I plan to kill them, Sam-I-am." (Apologies to the good Doctor, smiling down from above.) Lethal Weapon meets Sister Act. Certainly people pitch this way, but anyone can do this without thinking very hard about it. We need specifics about this particular project, this character, their problem. Why it's worthy of attention, and how it's going to get attention.
The pitch continues with the idea we've been bandying about Hollywood. The one sentence, 25-words-or-less summary (called a premise). Whose story is it, who's the main character? The big question is, why are they interesting? What's the critical aspect of their character which is going to eventually warrant two hours of reading a script, sitting in a theatre or renting a home video? What's the protagonist's problem? Movies are exercises in problem-solving; we go to the theatre to watch this person-with-a-problem try to solve it over the course of two hours. As we watch, we think to ourselves "If this were a problem in my life, would this be the way I would attempt to solve it? Is there a better way for this person to solve this problem? Is there anything in the way this person is trying to solve their problem which might apply to any problem I might have in my own life?" We're looking for solutions to problems in our own lives.
Young people love to watch Pee Wee's Big Adventure, where the hero's problem is recovering his lost bicycle. Not something adults are very concerned about, although with the rise of carjackings it wouldn't be too difficult to realign the hero’s problem into a more adult situation. Nonetheless, we watch a film because we care about the problem, and we want the hero to find a solution to it. So we start by coming up with a one-sentence problem, that 25-words-or-less summary of the two-hour story. That one-sentence premise might mention or at least hint at the villain, the bad guy/girl in the black hat ("antagonist") who's causing the problem for the protagonist. Regardless of titles and job descriptions, all stories seem to be some version of the struggle between good and evil, to some degree.
The key to any good story is to present conflict as frequently as possible. The more pronounced, well-stated, well-developed and all-encompassing the conflict, the more interest will be generated as a consequence. So that 25-words-or-less premise, that one-sentence summary of the conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist, should contain as much conflict (or at 1east the clear promise of it) as possible. Give more than a little thought to what the conflict will be all about in your story. A stolen bicycle may not be enough, but working to solve the mystery of a stolen bicycle and then struggling to locate and defeat the thief may be sufficiently interesting for a greater number of people. Raising the stakes beyond a bicycle to something of even greater value may make the story of interest to an even greater number of people, which will help generate larger box-office numbers.
Now that you've established the basic conflict, you want to add a little bit more detail. You want to slightly increase the amount of information you'll tell people about your project. Don't overpower them with a two-hour story; no one's got that much concentration or interest in your project at this point. Develop your 25-words-or-less sentence into a slightly bigger three-sentence summary. Before protesting about the need to break out of the three-act paradigm, remember that's exactly how Hollywood speaks and works. This process is how a project will be pitched to create interest.
You've heard this three-sentence summary before: it's the standard "Boy Meets Girl, Boy Loses Girl, Boy Gets Girl" formula. You've seen it hundreds of times, and a recent successful romantic comedy was originally entitled Boy Meets Girl. But during the script's five-year development/rewriting process, Rob and Nora decided to retitle the script When Harry Met Sally. Stop and think: almost every romantic story you've ever seen, whether comedy, drama or fantasy, still uses that standard formula: Boy Meets Girl, then Boy Loses Girl, and finally Boy Gets Girl. You can change genders or even species, but it's still the same old story: a fight for love and glory, a case of do or die, the fundamental things still apply, ever more so on the Hollywood treadmill of profit-or-die, as time goes by.
Sure, we keep trying to find new twists on the old formula, but it still works: Boy Meets Girl, Who Turns Out To Be A Boy, Who The First Boy Then Loses, But The First Boy Misses The Second Boy, So The First Boy Gets The Second Boy, Who Continues To Act Like The Girl. Whether it's M Butterfly, The Crying Game or Victor Victoria, gender-bending stories still use the same tried-and-true formula which almost every romance has used in the past.
Developing The Idea
Expand the idea into a three-sentence summary of how the conflict starts, increases to a critical point, then resolves by the hero removing, reducing or solving the problem. Decide on the three-sentence summary which tells the beginning, middle and end of the story. Not in any great detail, but just enough to understand how the story starts out, how things develop, and how they finally resolve by the end. It gives a few more than 25 words, but add detail gradually. Keep the process under control. Watch any successful commercial film: the two hours will probably be divided into the beginning 25% (a half hour), the middle 50% (an hour), and the last 25% (another half hour). In other words, basic introductory material requires the first thirty minutes. During the middle sixty minutes, conflict is consistently increasing. In the last thirty minutes, the conflict comes to a head and is resolved by the hero with a happy ending. Set your watch by this plan. Take Home Alone, the most successful comedy ever made (so far). In the first half hour, you're introduced to the protagonist, Kevin. Meet his family, learn about his environment, find out his problem has to do with that family environment. Kevin wishes his family was not around because he can never get any peace and quiet. What happens a quarter of the way into the film? Kevin has been banished to the attic bedroom and wishes his family would just go away. So when he wakes up the next morning (at about minute thirty), he finds his wish has come true. That's why his line works so well:
"I made my family disappear." Be careful what you wish for, Kevin; you may get it.
The next sixty minutes (middle hour) shows how Kevin's life gets a lot more complicated because of his wish, due in large part to the conflict caused by the antagonists, The Wet Bandits. This conflict consistently escalates until we're 75% through the story. That middle 50% where most scripts fail, because it's tough to keep the conflict increasing during the "deadly middle" unless you've chosen a situation where there's enough conflict to sustain the story.
In the last half hour, Kevin finds and implements the solution to his problem, defeats the antagonists, and is reunited with his family. The formula has stayed intact: boy meets family (25%), boy loses family (50%), boy gets family (25%). Find a brief sentence for each of these overall segments; save the details for later.
Next, expand each of the three sentences into a short paragraph giving a little more detail about each of them. In the first sentence, "Boy Meets Girl":
What boy? Why do we like him? What girl? What is it about her which makes us interested in her story? What is it about each of these two people which we see in ourselves? Why would we be willing to give up two hours of our lives to watch their lives? How do this boy and girl meet? What in their relationship promises increasing conflict as the story goes on? What aspect of their conflict do we think will be worth watching? This information should be contained in the beginning of the story, translated into the first half hour of a two-hour script, so expand that first-of-three sentences in a paragraph consisting of three, four or (at the most) five sentences which summarizes the action of the first half hour (first 25% of the script), while at the same time giving a little more detail about the beginning than simply the one sentence itself.
Then, write a second paragraph which summarizes the action in the middle hour. This second paragraph should only be three, four or (at the most) five sentences long, and should give a little more information beyond "Boy Loses Girl." Since "Boy Loses Girl" is what usually happens at the end of the middle of the story (about page 90), "Boy Meets Girl" is actually the result of the past hour-and-a-half. Use the three or four sentences of the second paragraph to show what leads to the break up. Not a lot of detail, but enough to understand in a general way how the conflict is going to escalate meaningfully, unrelentingly and unavoidably until that critical point where all seems lost.
That "all-is-lost point" is the end of act two, which signals the end of the middle and the beginning of the end. It's also the end of the second paragraph explaining the second-of-three sentences. Next expand your third sentence into a third paragraph also three-four-or-five sentences long. This paragraph gives a little more detail about the third and final sentence: "Boy Gets Girl." What has the hero's strength been throughout this story? What lesson has he or she finally learned? How does that lesson give the protagonist the key for finally defeating the antagonist? The happy ending is "Boy Gets Girl," but the third paragraph tells how it's going to be possible to resolve the conflict of the past hour-and-a-half in a meaningful and convincing way. The last sentence of the third paragraph is the actual "Boy Gets Girl" happy ending, after which everybody leaves the theatre smiling because all turned out well in the end.
Writing a romantic story is more difficult than a single protagonist/single antagonist story, because in any romantic genre the two romantic individuals are each other's antagonist. The conflict is not as straightforward as the white hat/black hat conflict, where one character is clearly good and the other is clearly bad. In a romantic story he's her antagonist, she's his antagonist, they go through the battle to learn why they should be together, and being together is the happily-ever-after ending.
This project has been summarized three different ways: a one-sentence premise, a three-sentence beginning/middle/end with a little more detail, and three-paragraphs with the most detail so far. Next, find out how the details begin to work themselves out chronologically by writing a fourth summary with still a little more detail. In the days before computers, writers scribbled ideas for scenes on 3x5 cards, thumbtacked them on a corkboard and moved the cards around until they seemed in the right order. The problem was, this writer could never afford a room big enough to be able to stand far enough away from the corkboard to be able to see all the cards at one time. It doesn't help to be smashed up against a big bulletin board, staring at a few cards on the end of your nose, trying to figure what the whole story is about. You can't see the big picture if you're smashed up against it. There had to be an easier way, and there is, with or without a computer.
Writing The Script
After writing and rewriting the three summaries until they're as effective as can be, take one sheet of paper and number the lines 1-40 down one side of the page. Since most sheets only have about 33 lines, squeeze in a few extras; it's okay to cheat. Maintaining the 25%-50%-25% ratio, the first ten lines will be act one, the next twenty lines will be act two, and the last ten lines will be act three. Line 10 is the first act break (turning point),which signals the-end-of-the-beginning of the story and the-beginning-of-the-middle. Line 30 is the second act break, the end-of-the-middle and the-beginning-of-the-end. Act one is ten lines long, or 25% of the forty lines. Act three is also ten lines long, or another 25% of the forty lines. Deadly act two is twenty lines long, fully 50% of the story. The ratio of story material to structure is maintained.
The three-paragraph summary has 3-5 sentences in its first paragraph. Write the last sentence of that first paragraph verbatim on line 10. That's the first turning point, the act break at the end of act one. It's worded exactly the same in the 40-line scene outline as it was in the three-paragraph summary because it's a signpost, a milestone; it signifies you've finished telling the beginning of the story. Take the other 2-4 sentences from the first paragraph and insert them into lines 1-9 of the 40-line scene outline. If two or three lines on the 40-line scene outline are necessary to explain what happens in one of the paragraph-sentences, that's okay, use them. There's room to expand, and the purpose of this step is to add a little more detail. Fill up as many of the first nine lines in this 40-line scene outline as are needed to tell the beginning of the story.
When the basic steps of what happens in the first half-hour are told, move on to the second paragraph summary. Take the last sentence of the second paragraph and plug it into line 30 of the 40-line scene outline as the second act turning point. Take the other 2-4 sentences of the second paragraph and plug them into lines 41-29 of the 40-line scene outline. More than the original 2-4 sentences will be needed to express act two's story and character information, so use as many of lines 41-29 as are required.
The blanks on the 40-line scene outline are filling up with story and character information. When the middle of the story has been expressed in broad strokes, take stock. There may be blank lines in act one, and there probably will be some holes among lines 11-29 in act two. That's okay; say everything needed to be said in order to get across the basic conflict between the protagonist and antagonist, and don't worry about the rest yet. Move on to the third paragraph.
Plug the last sentence of the third paragraph into line 40 of the 40-line scene outline; that's the happy ending. Take the other 2-4 sentences of the third paragraph summary and plug them into lines 31-39 of the 40-line scene outline, expanding into additional blank lines of 31-39 for necessary character, plot and thematic information. When all three paragraphs have been converted into a 40-line scene outline. some of lines 1-40 may still be blank. That's okay; add only the most important details. But if there are significantly less than forty lines completed, the protagonist/antagonist conflict may need to be strengthened in order to support a full two-hours of script.
The reason 40 is a magic number is because 120 pages (which according to Hollywood takes 120 minutes) divided among 40 scenes gives an average scene length of three pages (three minutes) per scene. Some scenes will be longer than three minutes and some shorter, but it will average out to three per scene. If 30 lines will summarize the story, that's an average of four minutes per scene. While a four-minute scene once in a while may be effective, this continuous pace will usually slow things down quite a bit. Find the rule of thumb by deciding how long you can hold your breath. Four minutes? Then you can probably write a string of 30 four-minute scenes well. But most people can't hold their breath for four minutes, so an average scene length of three minutes per scene will probably be more comfortable.
This average depends on the genre of story being told, but the 40-line scene outline is a benchmark test of the length and strength of the material. It's not a rule written in stone; the material will be adjusted and rewritten, so don't worry too much about it. But if it only takes 20 lines to tell the story, six minutes per scene will probably be too plodding a pace. A 60-line scene outline will give an average of two pages per scene, and that's probably too choppy. Somewhere close to 40 lines in a scene outline will be a good first step toward finding the detail of the story.
A closer examination of the material in the 40-line scene outline yields important results. If all the information needed to tell this story can be summarized in significantly less than 40 lines, if the main conflict between the protagonist and antagonist can be conveyed in perhaps 27 or so lines, it means approximately 13 lines of material are lacking in the structure of the story. Re-examine the protagonist/antagonist conflict, strengthening it until it can't or doesn't need to be strengthened any more. Is it truly compelling enough to last for two hours? If so, the remaining 13 blank lines have to be completed in some other way. This is where a subplot may help.
The main reason subplots exist at all (other than to fill blank space), is to give additional insight into the character of the protagonist which is not available by watching his or her interaction with the antagonist. If a police officer is chasing a drug dealer, the warm/human/emotional side of the cop probably won't come out very often while he/she is fighting the evil drug lord. Therefore, a romantic interest or family-member subplot is created to illustrate the more human aspects of the protagonist's character. Those aspects are most easily revealed by means of interaction with a secondary, more sympathetic character. So fill in the blank 13 lines with a beginning, middle and end of the subplot selected for your protagonist's interaction with the secondary character, then spread this information among acts one, two and three.
Once the 40-line scene outline is completed, the wholesale "writing" begins. Many people think "writing" is done on a typewriter, computer keyboard, yellow pad or tape recorder, but these media merely provide a place where writing can be recorded, not where it is done. Writing is done in the head; that's why the process of writing has been described as "stare at a blank piece of paper until drops of blood appear on your forehead" or "Sit down and open a vein." That's why writing is so hard; it's thinking, organizing and reorganizing until things make sense. And it's not really the writing, but the rewriting which reveals the way story and characters work better, more convincingly, more compellingly. So all the typing, scribbling or dictating is merely recording what's been created so far, having first wrestled with the material mentally for a significant amount of time. Even though it feels "busy" to type, scribble or dictate, those processes are only busywork. It's not really writing unless it's first been beaten out in someone's head.
When someone says "I can only write when I'm in the mood," it's a clear sign they're not yet operating on a professional writing level. Professionals have to write regardless of how they feel; writing is their day job. The more you write, the more you'll find you can write whenever and wherever you need to, "inspired" or not. The ratio is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. Apply the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair. Et cetera, et cetera.
Expand the 40-line scene outline into a detailed outline. Take line #1 and write as much about that first scene as is known. Don't write dialog yet, but put down all the plot, character and thematic information known about that first scene. Be sure the scene contains conflict, or at least the potential for conflict later on in the structure, made possible by what's established here. Write as many sentences as needed. Make the process feel like "writing."
After everything's been said about that first scene, go on to line #2; write all the details about that scene. No dialog yet, but indicate everything which has to happen in order to move the story forward and give critical information about character. Finish with scene two, go on to line #3 and repeat the process. Then line #4 and so on, until every scene of the 40-line scene outline is written in as much detail as is known. This will provide a multi-page, detailed outline of the plot, and if you've considered the protagonist's problem long arid well, you will also have significant character development presented here. The key is ever-present conflict. Exposition is deadly; avoid it whenever possible. Communicate through conflict.
This conversion of the 40-line scene outline into a detailed outline encourages many more words onto paper by far, than during any of the other previous steps. By waiting until now to record all the details which have consciously and consistently been avoided prior to this point, it becomes apparent the morass of information swimming around in the writer's head has gone through a mental organizing, summarizing and discarding process. The details have been sorted through, and clear choices can now be made about what is really important to this project, and what can be gotten rid of because it is not as important as initially believed. "Gathering notes" or "doing research" prior to plunging into a project makes the project a lot harder to write, because the pile you've created must eventually be sorted through. As you "gather notes" and "do research", this pile gets taller with no direction, discretion or ability to discern whether a particular fact is important or merely interesting. Writers suffer from terminal curiosity, but this is not an effective structural or writing technique. Research, notes and curiosity are tools, but not the end product. They must be incorporated into a larger document and system which must be planned and created first, not after the fact.
The process presented here insists the writer not sit down at the beginning of the project and immediately jump in by writing at the top left corner of page one "It was a dark and stormy night." Plan what's going to be written, and at what speed it's going to be written, before doing anything else. Set certain, prearranged points along the way to stop and monitor progress, to see what's working and what's not working. Adjust the course as the project develops. This is much easier than sitting in front of the keyboard struggling with an opening sentence like 'The night was...", as Billy Crystal did in the first scene of Throw Mama From The Train.
A script should have a lot of "white space." Readers are put off by scripts that are too "black," having lots of letters, words, sentences and paragraphs. In script writing, less is more. Think haiku, minimalist painting or Fred Astaire's dancing. It doesn't look difficult until you try it. Make if look easy on the page. In sculpture we don't marvel at how many whacks the hammer and chisel make, but admire what's left. Hack and slash at the script. Make it lean, clean and pristine. A script is not a document which records every single detail of what will be seen on the screen and heard from the speakers. A script is a blueprint, an initial shorthand effort to suggest what will finally be placed on film. So leave room for the other creative team members and crew to make their contributions.
A scriptwriter creates characters, the situation in which they find themselves, and the conflict through which they're going to work for a happy ending. That's done by indicating what these people say and what these people do. What they think is the province of a novel; scripts get inside characters' heads only by the words which come out of their mouths and the actions which their bodies perform. The rest will be decided by many other people later in the creative process.
The best way to decide what's appropriate to include in a script and what's not appropriate is to read good scripts. Read five good scripts to have a basic idea of what a script is; read fifty good scripts for the concept to become more clear; after reading five hundred scripts, things may start to make sense. It's hard to find fifty good scripts (let alone 500), but the more we learn, the more we realize we don't know.
When the detailed outline is finished, expand it into a first draft. Despite the common misperception that this is the hard, first step where the real writing is done, expanding a detailed outline into a first draft is actually one of the easiest steps in the entire process. When the text of the detailed outline is reformatted into screenplay typing style, all that remains is to insert whatever dialog is necessary to get across story, character and thematic information. This development process practically guarantees an automatic 120 pages of typing filled with necessary information and fraught with conflict.
Anyone who thinks or says "I know how to write a good story, I just can't write good dialog," will have a much easier time writing dialog using this process than with many other methods. The reason dialog may seem difficult to write is because the scene being struggled with probably contains insufficient conflict. If two characters are fighting about something (verbally, emotionally, physically), it's much easier to put words in their mouths. Dialog is difficult to do well when its function is to merely communicate information. Exposition ("laying pipe") tries to manufacture conflict when none exists. It is doomed writing; emotionless information lacks appeal. This conflict-in-every-scene goal should be accomplished as early as possible in the process of developing the project.
Each step of this process should be developed in front of a writers peer group, or at least bounced off one or more other writers to get feedback about the work. Writers who think they should work in a vacuum are probably antisocial and nonverbal by nature. That's not how it works in Hollywood. Writers have to give good meeting, so it helps to practice social skills with a peer group. Get feedback about the project as it's being developed, and the project will be much better because the material's been tested on other writers at each step along the way. Don't test it on civilians; they don't buy scripts, they buy tickets.
What if a writer spends six months in a cave typing away, then stumbles out with 120 pages, only to find they're 120 pages of not-so-good writing? It happens all the time. Writers are not the best judges of their own work, but they do know about the work of other writers, because it's the same work they do themselves. Writers are personally, emotionally invested in their own projects, so test material on other writers as it's being developed and it will be much stronger writing by the time it gets into first draft form.
Professional-minded writers don't usually consider a script ready to be seen until it's at least in its third draft. It would be a lot easier if we could figure out what's wrong the first time and then get it right, but unfortunately the process doesn't usually work that way. The first 120 pages merely gets it on the paper, but not necessarily well. Rewriting does that. Get notes from trusted people who know what they're talking about, then rewrite.
When the peer group says the draft is finally ready to be seen after a number of rewrites, test this supposed "first draft" on a professional source. Someone whose job it is to recognize scripts which are ready, and to differentiate them from scripts which are only promising. When the professional approves, the draft may finally be ready to go out to a representative or production entity.