First, Uncle Phil wants to wish all my screenwriting forum pals a Happy New Year!
Second, I want to ask you Why do you write screenplays? Is it for money, to be a famous writer or what?
In July of 2012, I decided I was going to write a gangster television show pilot based on a true story. While reading a "how to" book about screenwriting in a big restaurant in Torrance, I had a waitress and a hostess both give me their actress cards. Maybe it was because I was wearing a nice suit or perhaps it was because when they asked me what I was doing, I confidently informed them I was going to write a television show. In any case, while working on the my first script, I caught the screenwriter's bug. From then on, I've concentrated a mighty effort to bring my work to the screen. It is a relentless quest and I'm getting ever closer to my goals. So I'll ask you again...
...Why do you write screenplays?
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Happy New Year to you, too! I write screenplays because I enjoy creating stories and the format is much more to my liking than a novel. I've always enjoyed writing plays...I was the girl in the neighborhood who spent her summer vacations writing short plays and then gathering up the neighborhood kids to perform it in our carport for their parents and other paying folks. Lol.
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I write as therapy, money is nice but not the biggest motivation. I also believe that because of my writing, I am immortal in a way. My films and books will remain long after I am gone.
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I write because I can't imagine doing anything else for the rest of myself life and loving it as much as I do writing, and also, I've never worked so hard for something in my entire life.
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It was something that likely was tugging at me since youth, but my head said, "engineer, not writer." I finally figured out I can do both. Better late, than never. I think 2018 will be a good year on the writing front. Working on my 4th script now.
I like to tell stories. It's a way of flexing my imagination while adhering to my left brain orderliness. And I love creating. Money and fame? Meh, okay.
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Uncle Phil, I write screenplays for the glorious lifestyle it accords me and the money - what other reason could there possibly be?
Doug:
Well, he'll yeah!
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Simply, I have to write my scripts because nobody else would.
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Because I couldn't write a novel to same my life.
Dan, you are still a joker and we are in 2018! Bless your squirrel's heart...
Writing fantasy is one of the few occupations where I can do drugs openly and still be a positive role model.
Film is a very powerful medium. Film as an artform has also been used for propaganda purposes a lot the past hundred years. I love movies first of all. And luckily I stumbled upon screenwriting when I was 15 and fell in love with it. Writing saved me in so many ways too but that is another very long story on its own. I hope to some day be able to make movies that really can portray our human condition, society, everything that we are, might be or hope to become. Today, the film industry is all about fantasy supernatural things, superhuman powers and heroes in tights from comic books or novels. But the time will come when film will make a full circle and real and original stories will be in demand again. I write and would love to make films that can touch someone, make you wonder and above all question all kind of things and our reality in order for us all to better ourselves on an individual and collective level so that we may learn together without shoving any false messages down somebody´s throat. I write and want to make films that don´t divide humanity but bring it together. I write and want to make films where a female character doesn´t have to have a wet t-shirt every five minutes or has to bend over every three minutes but where a female character is real and multifacetted just as women are in real life. I write and want to make films where male characters are not some superstrong dudes that never make mistakes or can´t be vulnarable but are real and down to Earth and exploring what it truly means to be a man. So...yeah... I have a lot to say and I have no voice in our society. But I can write. And maybe some day someone will hear what I have to say about great many things. That is why I write.
I have visions of great stories that I want the world to see. And, I can remember as a child reading so many stories and visioning them as I read them, they took me places I had never been. Even to this day, I confuse things I've read in a book with a true memory. So, it was like I was really there. I want to take others to new places...especially juveniles....this world can be a crazy place.