Writing a script in 10 days?

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  • Writing a script in 10 days?

    A writer for The Asylum, a successful B-Film prodco, says that he writes his scripts in 10 days. I've read in a different article a while back that they expect such quick turnarounds from their writers.

    Anyone here writes for them? Is there a unique methodology that their writers use to write so fast?

  • #2
    Re: Writing a script in 10 days?

    there was a guy here, way back, who said he wrote a 400 page novel in a couple days or a couple hours or something like that. he was always saying **** like that.

    but reading his posts...you could kind of believe it. kind of.

    last i heard, he was a musician, trying to make sounds out of coconuts (ripe) and sand, roofing materials, old karate magazines and an album with bruce lee on the cover, and lawn chairs reconfigured into musical instrument that he had to teach people to play, but once he got it all down, he said his music would sound like...the future.

    he thinks people think his music is...terrible, because we are all stuck in the present and the past. no vision.

    the future.

    that is the sound of his music, he says, last i talked to him.
    the future sounds like the crap he comes up with, he believes. perhaps it does but i hope not. i guess it could sound worse. like people just screaming all the time or something like that.

    pretty weird conversation, actually, drinking a beer and him beating on coconuts and strumming on lawn chairs and throwing sand over his shoulders and saying 'hey jude' and other beatles music words over and over and stuff like that.

    that poster's name was uncle leo or mompoken or someone else like maybe vig. gotham, ce, etc. i can't remember. sad!
    Last edited by AnconRanger; 06-27-2017, 07:46 PM.

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    • #3
      Re: Writing a script in 10 days?

      Originally posted by socalwriter1 View Post
      Anyone here writes for them? Is there a unique methodology that their writers use to write so fast?
      I think the most solid methodology for that is the old-fashioned, tried and true "BUTT IN CHAIR" technique, but I'm sure there are other good ideas out there
      Last edited by SBdeb; 06-27-2017, 08:12 PM.

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      • #4
        Re: Writing a script in 10 days?

        John Hughes would supposably crank out his drafts over a weekend on average. nice work if you can get it

        http://splitsider.com/2012/07/the-lo...f-john-hughes/

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        • #5
          Re: Writing a script in 10 days?

          Originally posted by socalwriter1 View Post
          A writer for The Asylum, a successful B-Film prodco, says that he writes his scripts in 10 days. I've read in a different article a while back that they expect such quick turnarounds from their writers.

          Anyone here writes for them? Is there a unique methodology that their writers use to write so fast?
          If you don't give a **** about coherent plots, dimensional characters, and good dialogue, sure, you can write a script in 10 days just like the Asylum.

          I know someone who worked on set for a few of their movies. They really don't care about quality.

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          • #6
            Re: Writing a script in 10 days?

            Originally posted by docgonzo View Post
            If you don't give a **** about coherent plots, dimensional characters, and good dialogue, sure, you can write a script in 10 days just like the Asylum.

            I know someone who worked on set for a few of their movies. They really don't care about quality.
            You can write a good script in ten days. You can also write a truly terrible script in ten years.

            You should never mistake the process for the result.

            Asylum scripts are bad because they're looking for a certain kind of product. It would be a mistake to think that the reason that those movies are the way they are is simply because they don't have the time to perfect their scripts. Gee, if only they'd just gotten better writers and spent more time developing them, and hired better actors, those Asylum movies would be so much better.

            No, they develop the scripts the way they want them to be and hire the actors they want and produce movies that are just the way they want them to be.

            One movie might be a mistake. Fifty movies is a formula. And it's proven to be a very successful formula.

            I used to write screenplays in around ten days. I did it by writing ten pages a day. When I was working for very low budget companies, I used to write screenplays in four to five days. I did it by writing fifteen to twenty pages a day.

            This didn't include the time that it took to write the treatment, which was usually two to three days.

            The ability to do this comes out of working television, where you have to be able to write this fast because you write to deadlines. Very often, the teleplay that you'd be writing this week had to be re-written next week and would be going into pre-production the week after and would be on stage the week after that.

            So there's no time for crapping around. If a writer messes up or didn't deliver on time, somebody had to pick up the ball super quick and do a page one rewrite in a day and there wasn't any room for error because sometimes what you were writing had already been cast and they were going to start shooting in two days.

            So that's the kind of skill set that a writer develops that allows him to turn out twenty pages a day.

            And by the way, the fastest I've ever written a screenplay was two days.

            And that script sold and was produced -- not a particularly good final result, but that was because (in my humble opinion) the script was substantially rewritten by the producers.

            NMS

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            • #7
              Re: Writing a script in 10 days?

              You know when nmstevens writes something, just pay attention. The man is the best poster on this forum.

              That is the voice of authority. As always.

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              • #8
                Re: Writing a script in 10 days?

                If someone paid you 100k, could you write 12 pages a script a day for ten days? I would think most people could do that. When you're head is down and you are in the zone script pages just peel away.

                So, yes, writing 120 pages of script in ten days is possible? I believe Goldman wrote Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid over a long weekend. But that's William Goldman, not John Smith writing in his parents basement in Springfield, Illinois.

                You ever see those movies where the hero lives the same moment over and over again until they are a master of the moment. They know exactly what will happen, when, they have trialed and error their responses and now know exactly what the correct response is or action to take. Movies like Paycheck or Groundhog's day. As a writer, you need to do the same thing in your scenes. You need to relive that moment over and over, you need to trial and error the responses and actions of the characters, you need to find the link that connects the scene to the core issue and raise it to the surface. You need to become a master of the moment. That's in every scene. This kind of thing doesn't happen in ten days for most writers. Doesn't happen in ten months.

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                • #9
                  Re: Writing a script in 10 days?

                  What nmstevens said about writing a screenplay in ten days is correct.

                  My own thought is that you can write 10-15 pages a day if you have a treatment or a detailed outline or a story that you are adapting.

                  You will be busy, but you will know where you are going, and you will just have to put the characters into the right places, make them do what you already know they are going to do, and have them speak their dialogue. The dialogue will probably be the hardest part, but, again, if you know what is going to happen, it will make the dialogue easier, too.

                  Then you will have a couple of days left over to polish.

                  It has been about ten years, but I once wrote a Deadwood script to enter into the Austin Film Festival. I wrote it in a week or slightly longer. Of course, it was a teleplay, so it was only about half the length of a feature. But I did not have a treatment or an outline. I was making it all up as I went. I did not know where I was going except that I knew how I wanted to end the episode, and I knew one event that I wanted to include. Everything else was a huge, intimidating blank. It was grueling to get the script done, but I did it.

                  The result? Uh, definitely mediocre, but still not terrible.

                  So ... if you have a treatment, a ten-day stint of writing to finish a script is doable.

                  "The fact that you have seen professionals write poorly is no reason for you to imitate them." - ComicBent.

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                  • #10
                    Re: Writing a script in 10 days?

                    If you have to do the entire story development and rewrite process within 10 days, then that's a killer. But a draft in 10 days is pretty doable, especially if you're writing full-time.

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                    • #11
                      Re: Writing a script in 10 days?

                      You can write a vomit drat that fast, but you'll probably have a lot of placeholder lines and generic action instead of good lines of dialogue and sharply etched moments of character.

                      Just because you can doesn't mean you should.

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                      • #12
                        Re: Writing a script in 10 days?

                        I agree with most of the others here when they say someone could write a full script in ten days if writing full time. Key words: full time.

                        But sadly most of us don't have the luxury of writing full time because we haven't gotten to that place in life where we don't have to work another job to pay the bills.

                        I work 7 days a week 10-12 hr days. (no wonder I am tired all the time, lol) I work for myself (as opposed to being on someone's payroll) as an independent artist so needless to say I am working all the time just to make ends meet. Writing is what I do in-between until I can get to write full time... which is the dream.

                        I can usually get a full script done in about 6-8 months with about 3-4 drafts total.

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                        • #13
                          Re: Writing a script in 10 days?

                          Here's what the inimitable John August has to say when he weighs in the subject of "How long should it take to write a script?-
                          “Nothing is what rocks dream about” ― Aristotle

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                          • #14
                            Re: Writing a script in 10 days?

                            If you know well the story you want to tell it is absolutely possible. Both nmstevens and ComicBent are right. You can write a script in 10 days if you have a clear vision of what you're writing.

                            I wrote an sci-fi epic post apocalyptic, dystopian spec over four weekends Saturday and Sunday 12-15 pages a day. It was only weekends, and I didn't write during the week.

                            You can do it. 12 hour days of doing nothing else, not even showering. Ha!

                            FA4
                            "Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy b/c you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say." -- Edward Snowden

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                            • #15
                              Re: Writing a script in 10 days?

                              Depends too what you define as a writing. Can someone get an idea for a movie concept, extrapolate and map out a premise to a story, take that premise and start to formulate an outline to the dramatic structure, take that outline and script a draft in ten days? That would be dam impressive. I do not think that is possible, but you never know. The last step, the scripting, is definitely doable in ten days.

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