I remember being so terrified watching some of the Cracker stories, I think it was the storyline with Robert Carlyle as the guy they were after. The Lakes series were excellent too. He seems to get the best actors.Pelagios said:Jimmy McGovern is a god. That is all.
Thanks, wordplayer look good.m p said:Another good way to learn the form is to read all the scripts you can find in your particular genre.
Don't get the shooting script, try and find the actual script as it was first handed in by the writer. And see the movie.
One great site with all kinds of great info is http://www.wordplayer.com/ by Terry Rossio and Ted Elliot.
Experience is the thing and just a lot of writing, reworking and generating ideas I think. It's so different to novel writing but I find it exciting and would just love to have the experience of seeing/working as a screenplay is filmed.Lydniz said:I've sent stuff to the BBC writersroom in the past, but never even got through the first sifting. Although that may be because the title was the best thing about it. I do wonder about trying again with them, now that I've got a bit more experience.
Yes, I did think for a while that I'd like to get into screenwriting as I love writing dialogue. But you don't just need to be able to write good dialogue. You have to be good at creating tension and drama too, and that's where I fall down at the moment.Julia M said:Experience is the thing and just a lot of writing, reworking and generating ideas I think. It's so different to novel writing but I find it exciting and would just love to have the experience of seeing/working as a screenplay is filmed.
Yes, and the other thing I'm coming to understand is that you have to create so much through pictures and silence. I see my writing as it unfolds but for the screen what's shown and said really has to hit the mark.Lydniz said:Yes, I did think for a while that I'd like to get into screenwriting as I love writing dialogue. But you don't just need to be able to write good dialogue. You have to be good at creating tension and drama too, and that's where I fall down at the moment.
Amen to that!Pelagios said:Jimmy McGovern is a god. That is all.
Yes, I can get that narrative would be hard coming across from screenwriting. My thing going the other way is internal narrative, my first person character says/explains a lot in his head.DawnLee said:I guess I've had the reverse experience of everyone else that's replied so far.
I started out as a screenwriter and didn't decide to switch to novels until I was in my late twenties. It took me years of hitting myself in the face with a shovel before I could get the hang of writing narrative. Even now, dialogue is everything with me and narrative is still a struggle.
I am adapting See You, but only for my own personal reasons. I've gotten a lot of reviews that mention it would make a great movie, but no one's beating down my door.I just miss screenwriting and I miss the story. The screenplay is currently taking a back seat to getting my second book out in March, but I'm really looking forward to it.
Scrivener has a basic scriptwriting template too.Peter Spenser said:Not that it's easy, but to make the process a little easier and to give your script every chance possible to be taken seriously, you need to use standard formats for the words on the page. Motion picture and television formats are not identical.
To help with this, I would strongly suggest purchasing a program called "Final Draft." It is pretty much what everybody (a lot of people) in the business uses to compose their scripts. It is not cheap. It lists for $300 but Amazon has it as either a disk or download for about $175. (I always go for disks when I can, for those "just in case" happenings.)
It comes with templates for all sorts of scripts, including stage plays. You might want to think about it, and look to see if there is a trial (non-printing) version somewhere. Check their web site.
Me too. I use a lot of italicised 1st-person thoughts. Kind of hard to get that across in a script without resorting to adding camera directions, which I was told is a complete no-no!Julia M said:My thing going the other way is internal narrative, my first person character says/explains a lot in his head.