Get a feel for how they work.

Screenplays are not stand-alone pieces of literary material. When you are writing a screenplay, you are writing a movie. Before you begin writing your first screenplay, you should get an idea of how words translate from the page to the screen. To help you accomplish this, read screenplays of some of your favorite movies, or find screenplays of movies you are less familiar with, and read and watch simultaneously or back-to-back.

A simple web search will point you to some online script databases, but you want to be sure that what you are reading are the movies’ actual screenplays and not simply transcripts. The more scripts you read, the better you will be at picking out which are authentic, but a good starting place is on the library page at johnaugust.com, where screenwriter John August has posted multiple versions of the scripts for his movies Big Fish, Go, The Nines, and others.

Learn the format.

You will notice that all scripts share a common format. This is industry standard. You are welcome to mimic the format on your own, but there is no need to: word processors like Final Draft, Celtx, Movie Magic Screenwriter, and others are specially made for screenwriting, and have the format built in. Let them do the heavy formatting lifting so you are free to focus on your story.

Pick your idea.

Now that you know what a screenplay looks and feels like, you need an idea for your movie. Pick something you are passionate about. You will be spending a lot of time with whatever story you choose, and you will most likely have to fight through highs and lows. You don’t want to lose steam.

Flesh out your story.

When your idea is solidified, you are going to figure out the beginning, middle, and end completely so you can work out any major plot problems before they arise. This process is called “breaking story.”

Two tools writers use to help organize thoughts, and to accomplish and express this are treatments and outlines. A treatment is essentially a prose-version of your story, from beginning to end. Unlike a treatment, an outline is not typically done in paragraph form, and instead tells the story either through lists or bullet points. An outline can be more or less detailed than a treatment, depending on its purpose.

If you are struggling with synthesizing your story, there are numerous books you can consult that may help you through the process. One favorite is Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat!

Once you have the major beats of your story down, you may choose to get even more detailed and do a scene-by-scene breakdown of what the movie will look like. For some, this takes the form of another outline. Some writers choose to do this on a chalkboard or on notecards, with one card for every scene.

Now, it is time to write.

There is no set way that a screenwriter writes a screenplay; everyone is different.

Some novice writers write after work every day for a year to complete a screenplay; other full time writers may be able to finish a draft working every waking hour until it’s done. Professional feature deals often will allow for a 12 week writing period for the first draft.

But each writer is different. Take as long as you need, especially for your first screenplay. Write at lunch, when you first wake up, in the middle of the night, or all of the above. Open your laptop at cafés, your iPad on airplanes, or your notebook in bed. Just be sure you leave time to rewrite. Because as the cliché goes, writing is rewriting.

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McKee, a Fulbright Scholar, developed his seminar while a professor at the University of Southern California, and began offering it to the public in 1984. It has been attended by over 50,000 students. As of April 2012, the book version is in its 19th printing in the United States.

Critics fault McKee for having no studio produced credits to his name, but McKee counters, saying “The world is full of people who teach things they themselves cannot do.”

In Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation., Kaufman attends McKee’s seminar (their fictional versions played by Nicolas Cage and Brian Cox, respectively). The film, which is rich with screenwriting commentary, illustrates another common criticism by using McKee as a stand-in who represents all screenwriting clichés.

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When using index cards for outlining, some writers get detailed with their cards, making one for each scene. Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat! proposes using index cards to get a handle on what he sees as a movie’s 40 major beats (10 each in acts 1, 2A, 2B, and 3), while other screenwriters simply use them to keep track of the most absolutely vital turning points in the plot.

Writers often have their own ways of implementing index card color coordination. Even with the same writer, color-based tracking systems can vary from movie to movie based on what would benefit from it most. Colors can be used for visualizing how scenes work emotionally, how they work tonally, which characters are featured in which scenes, scene locations, time of day, or for tracking any other variable element.

In a 2010 blog post, screenwriter John August offers these index card tips:

1. Keep it short. Maximum seven words per card.

2. A card represents a story point, be it a scene or a sequence. You don’t need a card for every little thing.

3. Keep cards general enough that they can be rearranged. (“Battle in swamp” rather than “Final showdown”)

4. Horizontal (a table or counter) often works better than a vertical (a corkboard).

5. Post-It notes make good alternative index cards.

6. Consider a letter code for which characters are featured in the sequence. Helpful for figuring out who’s missing.

7. Most movies can be summarized in less than 50 cards.

8. Cards are cheap. Don’t hesitate to rework them.

9. Consider a second color for action sequences. Helps show the pacing.

10. Write big. You want to be able to read them from a distance.

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Decide out what you want to accomplish, then figure out which scenes would need to change.

The first instinct of a lot of writers is to start from the beginning of the script and look for dialogue blocks, action lines, or description to improve. These are good, but rewrites can do more than that.

Try establishing bigger picture goals for the rewrite. Look for relationships that need strengthening, plot points that can be improved, or extraneous beats that can be eliminated. Identify the scenes that can be adjusted or rewritten to help you accomplish your goals. Then get to work.

Rewrites should not simply make pieces of the script better; ideally, they should make the script on the whole fundamentally better.

Of course, it never hurts to look for little tweaks and places where you can save page and story real estate, too.

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Instead, include mention of the character’s speech impediment when you introduce him, and then write the dialogue as normal, doing your best to capture the character’s voice (read: syntax) without trying too hard to mimic speech patterns. The director and actor will take care of that.

In a 2007 blog post, John August breaks it down simply:

• Use the speaker’s words
• Use the speaker’s grammatical structure
• Don’t try to duplicate the exact speech pattern on paper

If you have more than two apostrophes in a line of dialogue, you’re probably overdoing it.

If a character who does not normally speak with an impediment develops a temporary one for whatever reason (a cute girl makes him stutter, he has a mouth full of M+Ms, a punch knocks out a tooth and he has a temporary lisp), you can do your best to include it in the dialogue if it’s appropriate, or you can include it in a parenthetical or in the action lines.

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If it feels dishonest not to note it, note it. If not, it’s up to you.

For a case like West Side Story, the connection to Romeo and Juliet is obvious enough that no one will accuse the writers of stealing. Audiences may discuss it as “a musical Romeo and Juliette set in 1950s New York,” but as long as what they like about it is not solely the lovers-from-rival-families element, no one will look at the fact that it is an adaptation as a bad thing.

If you are adapting an obscure 14th century fable that is full of twists, however, and your modern sci-fi version is getting praise for its clever and original turns, it may ease your conscience to note the original story.

And of course, if it’s just a straight page-to-screen adaptation, you should certainly credit the original writer.

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On his deathbed, a father tells the story of his life the way he remembers it: full of wild, impossible exaggerations. His grown son tries to separate the truth from the fantasy before it’s too late.

A “tagline” is a short, clever one-off found on a movie’s poster:

An adventure as big as life itself.

A logline can be thought of as the shortest possible pitch of a movie — what a writer could use to sell an idea to a buyer in just a sentence or two. Taglines are used by marketing departments to sell movies to audiences.

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Some good questions to ask a potential agent or manager:

• Who are your other clients?
• Who are people you plan on sending me to meet with, both immediately and long term?
• What is it about my writing that got me in the room today? What about it did you like? What can I improve?
• Do you primarily communicate via phone or email? How often should I expect we’ll talk?
• Can I talk to a current client of yours?

There are no absolute right answers here; you just want to be sure he or she gives the answers you’re looking for. (Except for the last one. That answer should be “yes.”)

Also, keep in mind you and your reps will talk often. You want to be sure your personalities mesh; you don’t want someone who will annoy you or make you uncomfortable.

A red flag: Be weary of people who talk poorly about or badmouth past clients. That could be you one day.

And never trust someone who asks for upfront payment, or who asks for more than 10% or a flat fee.

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Your first instinct may be to mark each appearance of the clock as an INSERT or SUPER. This may be appropriate for the clock’s introduction, but would most likely be distracting after the first appearance. Instead, consider using slugs to mark time.

It also may be possible to include the clock without calling attention to it so obviously, both in its introduction and in its recurrences.

Keep in mind that your inclusion of the specifics of the countdown is strictly for flavor. Ultimately, the director and editor will determine how to handle it.

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This is not a hard and fast rule. If your scene is obviously either INT. or EXT., use it. For example, if you have a movie about a family that has encountered a shrink ray, and your centimeter tall characters are adventuring from the back seat of a car to the front, your scene is probably strictly INT.

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