Screenwriting Immersion

A couple of years ago, a friend and I arranged to meet for a glass of wine in my local pub. He is a film director and he wanted to discuss a concept for a movie he had had in mind for 20 years. His problem was that he did not have a story, just a vague idea he struggled to formulate. He felt stuck. I hoped that, over a relaxed chat, my story-teller side would be able to provide him with enough to finally move from concept to big screen. Fast-forward 4 months, a few meetings in the pub and a trustful friend, and I had a new project on my weekend to-do list: ‘SIAM’ was born, Roger had asked me to write his script.

 

By the end of the writing ‘SIAM’, I was hooked.

 

I LOVE writing.

Writing regular articles on this blog is titillating, writing books is exhilarating, and increasingly I discover that screenplay writing is also a thrill. It is probably the most challenging of the three, yet again I always enjoy a good challenge.

The difficulty lies in the different supports and mindsets required for these types of writing. Since an early age at school, I have been involved in creative writing and in various forms of dissertations and research, so I grasp the basics for story-telling on paper. For screenplays, I am a newbie. There is a specific format for writing a feature movie script, a specific terminology, as well as a specific approach: you are writing for the camera,  not for readers. Where a book calls on people imagination, a screenplay works on the visual and how the story once transferred to the screen will keep people enthralled. Also, as a novelist, you create a whole story and a world on your own. As a screenwriter, your work is ultimately a collaborative process, only at the start of the movie chain: it needs much flexibility for further involvement and adaptation by the director, the actors, the costumes, the make-up, the set artists and more. The screenplay is the first facet, but just one facet of a multi-faceted project.

 

Luckily, some friends in the movie industry had involved me long ago in the process of reviewing their scripts, so I was familiar with the format – even though I had not practiced it. So when I downloaded the necessary software – the industry classic, Final Draft – the layout was not new to me. The special formatting is used so that one page corresponds to about 1 minute of screen time, and so a script is ideally between 90 and 120 pages. Like for any new software when you first used it, there were some hit and misses at first and a few cringing moments, but overall I got the hang of it relatively fast. If you have never read a movie script, you should try to get a copy from a movie you like, it will surprise you (like Groundhog Day‘s in picture).

 

Anyway, I must have enjoyed the process, as I have been immersed since Spring 2015 in another screenplay project. For confidentiality purpose on the work in progress, I cannot get into details right now. It has put me yet again on another learning curve: rewriting the script of someone else. This  is not easy task, especially when the screenplay is based on a true story and I have to keep my overactive imagination in check. I compensate – or try to – with researches on the characters and the psychology behind their actions, and how to transpose my findings into the story with the right dialogues, visual scenes and sequences. For months, I  spent most of my free days, weekends included, in total immersion with this story, writing, reading and re-reading, editing and re-editing, usually doing it all on the floor of my living room…

 

… Though I will admit regular dance breaks, music blasting, when I needed a little bit of head space (I will not post a picture or video of this!).

 

When I started screenwriting, I had no idea the creative process would be so very different from novel writing. And I enjoy the two being this difference: it makes my writing world even richer!

Thank you for reading,

Yours, Virginie