Screenwriting : How do you write? by Bill Albert

I have learned the hard way, when you get a bright idea , make sure you know how it ends before you start writing.

I get a premise of a story then I fill in the meat of the story.

A boy meets girl story can be very expansive.

Is this a love story , a horror story, sci-fi?

What boy,? where from, good , bad, age, dying, athlete, alien?

What girl? good, bad, lonely, hard, soft, rich, poor?

Lots of combinations there for a very different boy meets girl story.

How it ends it what the audience/reader will remember.

I always start with the end too. I consistently use FD10's beat board to layout the three acts/major plot points and 8 sequences. I add character bios, ideas notes, etc before I write a single line of a screenplay. Before FD10 I used a cork board with cards to do the same thing. I want to physically see the story before I write.

I use Save the Cat beat sheet as just a guide and start writing.

Hi Bill. For me, I often work backward. Like you, I always know the ending first. Then I build the script/action from that ending. ;)

every ten pages have a big whammy moment.

I usually start with the ending as well, but then piece it together. Different sections come through as I am writing and I add or delete as I put the project together.

I start with the concept. I kinda think that's what people mean when they say that they start with an ending. I don't start with half of the people dead. I start with the concept and the conflict. The ending is the conclusion to the problem or conflict but the theme is the essence and why the story is told. Basically the central scene can be anything. Diamond gets stolen, girl gets kidnapped. Whether the diamond is found or not or the girl dies or not is only the conclusion of the theme.

slowly.

Jurij, just to clarify... for me, the concept is the story/premise idea as a whole. Theme is the underlining meaning or message that permeates throughout the story. When I say I start with the ending I mean I know how, why, and what the final conflict/climax/major turn of the story is and the final image afterwards. Then I work backward, considering rising action built through cause-and-effect. If I know it lands here, then how does the action build strategically to that ending. How can I build to it effectively? I find it more beneficial to know the final climax/major turn and adjust the middle and beginning accordingly to best set up that end. :)

I always begin with a logline to summarize my idea, Then I write a synopsis or create an outline. I don't always have an ending when I start. But I always have an idea of where I want to go. I leave a lot of room for characters to create their conversations and scene ideas always spring up during the process.

For me, it happens in different ways, sometimes I start with a concept and others with an interesting character, so I guess the process for me depends on how it started, if it is a character-driven story or if it is a message I am trying to express.

Pretty simple.

1. Write an outline of maybe 90-120 bullet points.

2. Edit the crap out of it. Every bullet leads to the next. And every bullet points back to the previous. Include who, what,where. Make a copy of this - you can use this for your treatment.

3. The big step: Break the bullets into sluglines. INT/EXT. PLACE TIME.

This will give you a good idea of where this thing is going and how many

scenes you are actually writing. Keep editing and rewriting. You may find

a single bullet is actually half a dozen scenes. Or several bullets

are in the same scene. It's all good.

4. Write the script. By this point you easily might have spent a month or

more or less. You'll still hit walls, but you will find that the script has a

tendency to "write itself" if you've put this much research into the outline, you

will have a lot of confidence in what you're writing.

Unlike most, I write the logline last, or towards the middle. Because I have put so much research in by this time I can write a killer logline.

There. An entire methodology on 1/2 page...

Hi Bill!

I'm always writing about what fascinates me. Sometimes this story is told thousands of times before me, but I see it from a different angle.

Sometimes I dream of some wacky characters and I start to discover what kind of crazy story they could tell me.

I'm sometimes occupied with some serious theme and I'm going to explore by asking myself questions: What if?

I simply do not have rules. If you really love to write, which is my case, stories simply find the way to you. Your task is to tell them in the best possible way.

Starting with an ending in for example Star Wars 6 would mean that your concept is: the good guys win. Starting with the ending in Get Out would mean that he goes to prison and you would have to build the story from there. Which he doesn't actually do, only the last scene was changed from the script while the rest remained pretty much the same. I don't see how you can start with an ending. There are A LOT of movies out there where the ending is changed last moment or changed in the script after a very short rewrite. So I don't really understand this way of building a story but I guess you can do anything these days. There is no one way to write a story. I just would be really curious to see what the end result will be in such a case. I think maybe "start with the ending" is used to mean "start with the concept". But I won't put words into people's mouths.

Jurij, I couldn't disagree with you more about Get Out and other films you mention. Lol! Again, when I say I start with the ending I'm talking about my process, about building the structure and plot. And many do work that way, pros in the industry and amateurs alike—they plan. I outline but I also leave room for discovery. So for me, I know where I'm going with the story (the ending) but it's how I get there is the journey. I don't start a project until I know my ending. I'll work it out in my head for some time first. You may have a different interpretation of concept, story, and theme, and a different process than I, but I do agree with you on one thing—there is no one way to write a story. And there's no one process either. Most here at Stage 32 are writing spec scripts on our own. We try to pitch them or enter them into contests or use them as calling cards to get representation or writing jobs or consider producing them ourselves. For most here, in the beginning writing a spec, there is no director or team of writers or producers or actors—not yet, anyway. On my projects, I'm the filmmaker until someone else shows up. Lol! :)

Okay, maybe I don't get what people mean by this or something. I just don't really see how this process will be done. Let's take an example: the Star Wars 6 ending. 3 weird people among them a human-bear are getting a medal from some random princess but you don't know what they went through. How could you track backwards from that?

Or let's take Get Out. A black guy sits in prison and gets a visitor. The visitor tells him there is no evidence left to prove that he didn't just randomly set a house on fire. How would one backtrack from there?

Or even a hypothetical example. A bomb goes off and everyone in a building die.

Jurij, FYI, you've got the wrong Star Wars, 6 is Return of the Jedi.

Beth, Natalie, Robert and all. I'm surprised how rarely it is that the ending changes as the story develops. It's really a crazy idea to do it that way, when I think about it, but I've never ended up changing the finale. They still end up in the same place.

I get to know my characters first. I like riding in the car listening to music that fits what I'm going to write and I just ride around and really get to know who my characters are that are going to populate my story. Once I know them well enough, then I write the story. For me, this gives my characters depth and substance instead of being flat on the page.

It’s wise to learn writing full treatments and outlines before you start scripts. That’s how it is done in real world job assignments. Can’t “wing it” . Folks want to know exactly what happens in every scene.