Re: Writing a script in 10 days?
What I find the most interesting are the "Oh, m'God no way!" responses from people who seem to be writing from a blank page one through to the end, ie. without any outlining or planning or even at least "thinking" beforehand.
How about we all dive into a lake, and just figure out how far we can swim each day, even though we can't even see the shore on the other side!?
With this criticism in mind, I'll say that I take 3-4 days to write my scripts.
Wait! We're talking about that script document with the industry standard styles and fonts, etc., the thing that ends up as 105 pages or so, aren't we? If so, that's about how long I take.
BUT, I've spent weeks beforehand, outlining the thing!
Here's an old screen snap of one of my outline docs that I posted over on the Amazon Studios forum (which is about to close down, incidentally). Some newbie writers there thought it was useful:
http://www.catconsulting.ca/stevegar...le_outline.jpg
That particular script outline took me over two weeks.
So, once I finished the outlining - leaving absolutely NO GAPS in logic or story-line - I merely cut and pasted the detailed Act 1-3 part of it right into my script template.
Voila! My script is already about 40 pages long (sometimes more). That's a nice way to begin the actual writing task; ie. you're not facing a blank page that says "1 of 1" and you know you need to turn it into "105 of 105" (or whatever).
Thus, you can see that the actual writing part of my screenplays is a big editing job - taking the prose in my outline and splitting it up into scene headings, dialogue and description, and polishing the heck out of it from there.
For the script in question, "Sam Buttle's Great Odysey", I think I had the "first draft" of the actual screenplay done in 3 days, which meant I evolved the outline prose into screenplay format at about 40 pages a day. Then, as per my norm, I followed up with about 4-5 detailed read-throughs before anybody got a chance to even know it existed, let alone read it.
Anyway, for me, this method works. I would really HATE to do it any other way, and I do have experience trying that:
Around 1985, as an excruciatingly naive young writer, I launched into a novel from a blank page one. I used on an old, dedicated word processing machine - so, not on a typewriter but not nearly as good as our modern PC software, either.
I produced 100 or so pages in a month or so, before I got entirely and irretrievably lost and quit in disgust.
It wasn't until I got the writing bug anew, some 20 years later, which was in the screenplay format of storytelling, that I realized I had to come up with some other way to organize myself. That meant outlining everything but the kitchen sink BEFORE starting the actual screenplay document.
I didn't intend to deflect this thread into an "Outlining or Not" topic, but I figured I had to explain my "screenplay in 3-4 days" claim made at the beginning.
That, and the factors that others have mentioned here, certainly makes two-week spec productivity possible. And if you're starting out with a full treatment or bible, written by others, it's almost an expected norm in the business.
What I find the most interesting are the "Oh, m'God no way!" responses from people who seem to be writing from a blank page one through to the end, ie. without any outlining or planning or even at least "thinking" beforehand.
How about we all dive into a lake, and just figure out how far we can swim each day, even though we can't even see the shore on the other side!?
With this criticism in mind, I'll say that I take 3-4 days to write my scripts.
Wait! We're talking about that script document with the industry standard styles and fonts, etc., the thing that ends up as 105 pages or so, aren't we? If so, that's about how long I take.
BUT, I've spent weeks beforehand, outlining the thing!
Here's an old screen snap of one of my outline docs that I posted over on the Amazon Studios forum (which is about to close down, incidentally). Some newbie writers there thought it was useful:
http://www.catconsulting.ca/stevegar...le_outline.jpg
That particular script outline took me over two weeks.
So, once I finished the outlining - leaving absolutely NO GAPS in logic or story-line - I merely cut and pasted the detailed Act 1-3 part of it right into my script template.
Voila! My script is already about 40 pages long (sometimes more). That's a nice way to begin the actual writing task; ie. you're not facing a blank page that says "1 of 1" and you know you need to turn it into "105 of 105" (or whatever).
Thus, you can see that the actual writing part of my screenplays is a big editing job - taking the prose in my outline and splitting it up into scene headings, dialogue and description, and polishing the heck out of it from there.
For the script in question, "Sam Buttle's Great Odysey", I think I had the "first draft" of the actual screenplay done in 3 days, which meant I evolved the outline prose into screenplay format at about 40 pages a day. Then, as per my norm, I followed up with about 4-5 detailed read-throughs before anybody got a chance to even know it existed, let alone read it.
Anyway, for me, this method works. I would really HATE to do it any other way, and I do have experience trying that:
Around 1985, as an excruciatingly naive young writer, I launched into a novel from a blank page one. I used on an old, dedicated word processing machine - so, not on a typewriter but not nearly as good as our modern PC software, either.
I produced 100 or so pages in a month or so, before I got entirely and irretrievably lost and quit in disgust.
It wasn't until I got the writing bug anew, some 20 years later, which was in the screenplay format of storytelling, that I realized I had to come up with some other way to organize myself. That meant outlining everything but the kitchen sink BEFORE starting the actual screenplay document.
I didn't intend to deflect this thread into an "Outlining or Not" topic, but I figured I had to explain my "screenplay in 3-4 days" claim made at the beginning.
That, and the factors that others have mentioned here, certainly makes two-week spec productivity possible. And if you're starting out with a full treatment or bible, written by others, it's almost an expected norm in the business.
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