Project Echo’s first draft is done. Saturday was the deadline to finish but some important life stuff came up and I had to postpone my writing until the next day. So yesterday I hunkered down and wrote for over 7 hours, whipping out 20+ pages (which was more than I had anticipated), and around 8:30 [...]
Category > Screenwriting
Fitting Writing Into Your Life
I’m a busy man. Apart from my full time job, I also have a wife and two children, ages 2 and 1. I love them so much, cannot even begin to imagine what life would be like without them, but… they are a handful. They ask for a lot of time, naturally. I cherish those [...]
Not Being Afraid to Write Terrible First Drafts
Here are a few quotes from the excellent resource, The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters, on writing first drafts. Since that’s exactly what I’m doing at the moment, I thought I would share.
I especially like writing the first draft, which I blaze through as fast as I can, without even stopping for spell checking [...]
On My Reading List
This is what my bedside table looks like. I have not read each of these cover to cover, but I’m slowly working my way through them. The Route 66 books on the bottom? Research. (I heart you Tulsa County Library) And I thought about wedging War and Peace in there to make myself look all [...]
Watching Bad Movies on Purpose
Previously I had written that when tackling a screenplay, you should absorb as many of the great films in your chosen genre as possible. But over the weekend I learned that watching bad genre examples is equally important, if not more so.
Frantic, Roman Polanski’s 1988 “dread filled thriller” (to quote the marketing blurb), is about [...]
Screenwriting Technique - Which Way is Best?
There are a lot of different screenwriting ‘rules,’ but the key idea is to write in such a way that you paint a vivid picture of the film in the reader’s mind. That doesn’t mean describing all of the camera angles verbatim (a big no-no, actually), but using enough descriptive language that the director/producer/potential investor [...]
Researching Genre - And I Need Suggestions
In writing a film, it is crucial to have an excellent grasp of the genre you’re working in. How could you hope to write an effective romantic comedy if you’ve never seen Annie Hall or You’ve Got Mail? And how weak would your supernatural horror script be if you’d never seen The Exorcist or The [...]
The 1st Draft - Halfway There
Well, not quite. Today is June 15th, the halfway point between when I set the deadline for my first draft and when it’s actually due (August 1st). I should have at least 60 of the 120 pages done. I don’t. Not quite. But i’m not discouraged, as I’ve been solving plotting issues left and right [...]
Success! (and the writing process)
Early this morning I broke the story for Project Echo. I’d been writing scenes without an outline or an endgame in place, so it’s nice to finally have a destination in sight.
For some of you it might seem crazy to write without an outline. How do you know what the story is? How do you [...]
