How did you get bit by the screenwriting bug?

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  • How did you get bit by the screenwriting bug?

    Was there a magical moment - epiphany? What about screenwriting drives you to continue doing it? Why are you so passionate about the art form?

    Few actually make it and it's not like performance art where you get an immediate audience reaction (unless the movie's made). It's solitary. There is so much rejection and very little reward. What makes it rewarding?

    For me, I enjoy the feeling of putting my active imagination into something tangible - on paper. I continue to have hope that one day, what started as an idea in my head can be seen on the big screen. I love movies too. That's what keeps me going. I love the movie experience and want to be part of creating that.

    I discovered writing while in acting classes in college. It was fun to create our own scenes. I then started writing sketch comedy scenes then I was really hooked.

  • #2
    Re: How did you get bit by the screenwriting bug?

    Some years ago, I wrote a novel and put the opening chapters on a writing board. A produced screenwriter told me it read like a screenplay and she helped me adapt it.

    I really enjoyed the process and thought perhaps I was more suited to scripts than novels. About ten pages into my second script and I was completely hooked.
    TimeStorm & Blurred Vision Book info & blog: https://stormingtime.com//

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    • #3
      Re: How did you get bit by the screenwriting bug?

      I worked at a Blockbuster when I was 19. Around the same time, I was taking a creative writing class at a community college where the teacher liked the way I wrote and kept trying to convince me to switch my major to journalism. I didn't, but I did allow her to inflate my ego a bit and decided I could do better than all the crappy movies lining the shelves where I worked. Hell, I'd dabbled in writing short stories when I was younger. How hard could it be?

      That was seven years ago. I'm unrepped, unsold, and unproduced. For some reason, I'm still writing and still enjoying it.
      QUESTICLES -- It's about balls on a mission.

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      • #4
        Re: How did you get bit by the screenwriting bug?

        About two hundred pages into my third unfinished book I said, "there has to be something easier than this ****."
        www.silvercop.com
        If we don't get the information, and if we don't get the leads, we can't track down the killers.

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        • #5
          Re: How did you get bit by the screenwriting bug?

          I spent about three years in the dotcom start-ups where I had to pitch to investors on my companies' prospectus. But when the dotcom bubble burst in 2000, I had all this experience in writing creative fiction of business plans.

          I asked around to find out what other industry where I can write fiction, spend millions of dollars, and have nothing to show for it.

          That's how I discovered screenwriting.

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          • #6
            Re: How did you get bit by the screenwriting bug?

            Always loved movies. Wanted to make them. Initially through directing. But I didn't have the guts and wasn't resourceful enough to gain funding/equipment/crew to actually do it. My plan would be to write a screenplays, sell them for a millions of dollars, then use the money to make my own films.

            11 years later...

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            • #7
              Re: How did you get bit by the screenwriting bug?

              I got the bug from a rectangular device with buttons that was developed in the 60s and mass-marketed in the 80s -- the Video Cassette Recorder.

              I watched tons and tons of movies. From lo-budget trash to teen sex farces to the classics. I wanted to know the insides and inner workings of films and why CITIZEN KANE and the like are so lauded. That led to Syd Field and Dr. Linda Segar and the rest is mystory.
              sigpic

              "I'm gonna run ya ragged!"

              "YEE HAWWW!!!"

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              • #8
                Re: How did you get bit by the screenwriting bug?

                You know, it's great to have a thread that's bound to be mostly good news! Way to go!

                For me? Epiphany of the gut wrenching kind. Nearly stomach-turning. After watching what I consider my favorite movie for what was, I believe, the seventh time. Something just clicked, and I went downstairs and started scribbling. Didn't even know it was called a screenplay.

                The date? March 26, 2008.

                13 scripts later, with most of those done in the past year, and on my 14th now, that's all I'll say about that first effort till I get a sale... hopefully someday soon.

                But looking back, the oddest thing is that for a long time I was surprised I was writing scripts. Then I realized there were several things in my past that very well suggested I'd be doing this some day, even though I didn't start till into my second half-century! It was a strange, labyrinthine path, that's all.

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                • #9
                  Re: How did you get bit by the screenwriting bug?

                  I could no longer afford 16mm film.
                  I could still afford paper.

                  - Bill
                  Free Script Tips:
                  http://www.scriptsecrets.net

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                  • #10
                    Re: How did you get bit by the screenwriting bug?

                    The first time around I tried was when I was 17, in my freshman year of college. I watched a movie (not going to name the name because it's super embarassing) and just thought -- I want to do that. Of course I became a statistic and quit a few months later.

                    The second time around, I woke up one December morning in 2008 after just having a dream and I said to myself "I have to write that." And I did... wrote the first draft in 2 weeks. It became my first completed script.

                    And here I am -- on Done Deal 2 years and some months later
                    Quack.

                    Writer on a cable drama.

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                    • #11
                      Re: How did you get bit by the screenwriting bug?

                      Full-force realization came, of all things, when out of boredom I decided to watch a random episode of LAW & ORDER: SVU that I had accidentally taped. That was in August 2006, and I can remember the exact shot that made me realize that "that... THAT!" was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

                      INT. PINEAPPLE - DAY


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                      • #12
                        Re: How did you get bit by the screenwriting bug?

                        Mine was a truly sad story involving... too sad to tell on this thread. Anywhoo, the writing started then and the screenwriting happened several years later.

                        The point is that once the trigger happened, there was no going back. There was never a choice but to write.
                        "Take the thing you love, and make it your life"--Californication. [email protected]

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                        • #13
                          Re: How did you get bit by the screenwriting bug?

                          Was going to make a joke about some giant insect infecting me with some kind of virus, but then I remembered I writer thrillers, not comedies!

                          Ever since a kid I've been telling stories. Mainly to get out of trouble, so I soon learnt how to make fiction sound believable!

                          But my epiphany moment happened on my first visit to Cannes: I was stood on the Croisette looking at all the hotels when it hit me - the entire world's film market is here and after ten years of saying "one day I'll write a script", but doing nothing about it, I now have nothing to give them! What an a$$hole!

                          After that, I went home, quit my job and started writing - and loved it. And still do.

                          So, I can quite honestly say, if it wasn't for that epiphany moment, I'd be financially OK!

                          Mat.

                          By the way, it's great to hear all the different routes that have brought us all together under the roof that is DDP.

                          And I just have to say to HamBoogul's and Bill's replies.
                          I'm a product of everything I've ever experienced ... I need to get out more!

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                          • #14
                            Re: How did you get bit by the screenwriting bug?

                            I worked for a Law Firm where The Farrelly Bros. Brother-in-law, Barbara Delinsky's Husband, one of Scott Rosenberg's friends and David Kelly's former Boss worked.

                            There was always a lot of talk about who was doing what and writing what. I was aware of script writing before that, but I'd never seen a real script until one of the folks gave me an old draft of Me, Myself and Irene.
                            I was hooked after that.

                            Funniest thing I'd ever heard, David Kelly's former Boss (and my Direct report)
                            sticks his head out of his office door and screams at the top of his lungs "DAVID KELLY IS FARKIN MICHELLE PFIEFFER IN OUT IN L.A. AND I'M STUCK HERE WITH YOU FARKIN' PEOPLE"

                            Hamboogul - I took a bunch of Companies public during the Dot Com days. It's burst didn't come as a shock. Most of those companies, if people bothered to read the risk factors and assets, were nothing but two or three guys, an idea, a folding table and a server.
                            He who laughs last is mentally slow

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                            • #15
                              Re: How did you get bit by the screenwriting bug?

                              I've been writing since I was a wee lass. I always planned to write a novel, got big fancy creative writing degrees and still had not done so.

                              Then one day I read If Chins Could Kill, Bruce Campbell's autobiography that talks about the making of Evil Dead, and I thought "Hey this guy made a movie. I wonder if I could write one?"

                              And I turned the novel I had attempted to write into a screenplay. Took me almost a year to write 6 pages of a novel. Took me one day to write 20 pages of a screenplay.

                              Never did write that novel.
                              Chicks Who Script podcast

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