Sunday, February 10, 2008
Parameters of screenwriting
It usually takes a screenwriting student some time to realize how incredibly efficient film storytelling is. A frequent marker of this efficiency is the predominance of short scenes in the screenplay. For example, my draft is 104 pages long -- and 292 sluglines/scenes! The average scene, in other words, is only about one-third of a page in length. There are only eight scenes over a page long; only three over two pages long. How different this storytelling strategy is from writing for the stage. In my new (posthumous) play, the first scene is 45 pages long! Very different animals.
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3 comments:
In fact, the easiness in changing scenes is the main difference among both arts, isn’t it? I am a 37 year-old amateur screenwriter from Spain, where I live, nine time zones among us. I knew about you from last May, when I started living a totally unexpected change in my life, when I was infected by the writing virus. The screenwriting virus in fact, which only cure is writing, I’m afraid.
Avoiding details, I started writing a screenplay, or rather, a spec script, just for fun. And now I find myself totally caught and chained to the courier new 12 double space sluglines & Co., in English, by the way. I started following your advices and I continued reading many other webs, and now, when I have almost finished my work, I come back to you in the net, as closing the circle. I find here a kind of charm or warmth or empathy… it is like feeling you are a Boris Vian’s friend, even if he died more than a decade before you were born. Fortunately in this case both friends are alive -phew!
And here I am with a fabulous spec screenplay which is very respectful with almost every advice I have read but for the insignificant detail of being a 250-page spec screenplay! A parameters question, ahem. I must swear it isn’t overwritten, that I have written 250 pages of absolute action-packed story in an emotional, intelligent and, what is more, a totally original situation, being this fully from an objective point of view and not the product of my self-esteem, I want to make this clear -I swear it, ha ha!
So, what would you do before registering it in the WGAW and submitting it to a few agents?
Kindest regards!
A. Leon
A 250 page screenplay! The first thing I would do is divide it into two 125 page screenplays, calling it Part 1 and Part 2! Fix 1 so it has a dynamite ending.
Register it. Then pitch it with short, concise query letters to producers and agents.
Brilliant, thanks a lot! I'll put my nose to the grindstone and I'll keep you in the loop.
P.A. Leon
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