Simple Tasks to Become a Great Screenwriter and Filmmaker
// April 26th, 2009 // No Comments » // filmmaking, screenwriting
In my last post I talked about how important practice is to screenwriting and filmmaking just like any other profession. Today I want to talk a bit about some of the goals and tasks I’ve put into place for myself to take those next steps to becoming a great screenwriter and filmmaker.
I wanted to set goals for myself that would push my creative limits while keeping me on the right track to creating simple yet compelling rock solid stories. In addition to that I know that the best way to get practice is by just doing it a shit load of times until I kick ass at it.
A quick side note. While writing this post I found my self distracted. Another screenwriter I follow on Twitter put up a link that looked interesting so of course I followed it. It went to an interesting post about screenwriting competitions. After reading that I followed a link to another article, then another, and before I knew it I was reading 23 Steps to a Feature Film Sale on Tedd Eliot and Terry Rosio’s screenwriting web site. Even though it’s a really good article, I’m no where near ready to put the article’s information into action. I still have a lot of writing and learning to do before I’m ready to start working professionally. I bring this up because it’s really important to not get lost and distracted in the enormous magnitude of information online these days. I’m not saying to stop learning and growing your screenwriting and filmmaking knowledge, I’m merely pointing out that learning can be a massive road block to you actually doing something. Limit your “education” time online each day and spend some real time applying what you’ve learned to your film or script.
Now yes I realize while you sit here and read my post you are doing exactly what I caution you not to do, but I’m telling you, the second you are done reading through this entire post close you’re browser, open up Final Draft, and start writing. Ok, on to some of my screenwriting and filmmaking tasks.
Spontaneous Creative Writing
So first goal for myself was to help work any sort of hints of writers block that might ever thinking of showing itself. I know that if I can develop writing as a habit it would be much easier for me to just sit down and rip out page after page of amazing content. In order to help myself reach this goal I committed to sitting down a minimum of four nights a week and write something.
Now this doesn’t have to be anything massive or substantial. What I typically do is sit down and write a quick short scene, usually no more than four or five pages. I don’t plan anything out. I don’t outline anything. I don’t write it as a short story. I just sit down and start writing.
I’ll get an idea in my head for a situation and then I just go at it. Creating and developing on the fly while my fingers viciously fly across the keyboard. My character and story just develops as I go. Now I’m not saying anything useful or good ever comes out of these writings, but that’s not really their main purpose.
But what this does do for me is allow my mind to creatively go where ever it needs to go. For me anything I can sit down and write is great practice, and of course really challenges me to be creative on a very consistent basis. You might even call this a form of improv screenwriting. I’ve found it really helpful and relaxing to be able to just write what ever I want without worrying about whether or not it’s going to be good, or whether it fits with my story or characters.
I compare it a lot to just creative brain storming in the design world. As a designer to help flush out ideas you just sketch out anything that might pop up in your head, and eventually that leads to what turns into the final product. But without that extremely important first step a lot of those final ideas would never make it to the surface.
The same goes with writing, if you don’t let those deep down buried ideas work themselves out to the surface than you could miss out on the next great story or character idea just hiding in your brain.
Bed Time Stories are Great Story Telling Practice
Ok some of you may not be able to take advantage of this really powerful next task I do, but find a way to do it anyways. I have young kids, and they really enjoy when I read them a book before bed. I’ve been doing this for quite a while until I realized why am I reading them someone else’s story when I could be telling them my story instead.
That’s right, every single night I pitch a story idea to my kids!
Since I want to use this as another sort of improv story development exercise, I ask each of my two kids to come up with a single word. My rules are whatever words they come up with, usually 6 and 7 year old boys come up with really crazy stuff, I have to create an entire story around the two words.
And since I want to leverage this time to improve and work on as many skills as possible I don’t just tell them the story but act it out, play the parts, and truly pitch this thing just like I’m standing in front of Spielberg.
So not only is this extremely entertaining for the kids, who doesn’t like a really weird goofy acting dad, but I’ve found this to be extremely beneficial to my story telling and pitching ability. Especially when I already know the story. Since I do this all improv it forces me to understand and focus on things like proper story structure, beats that continue moving you through the story, and compelling and interesting characters.
I’ve found this a really enjoyable and rewarding exercise for not only my story telling ability but also being a dad. I highly recommend you give it a shot.
What kinds of tasks do you make yourself do to improve you writing and story telling ability? Leave your favorite screenwriting exercises in the comments section and share with the rest of us. Go ahead do it now, don’t be stingy just share already!
