Prequel to a Screenplay: Before Writing Begins
How to Write a Screenplay - The Basics in Five Easy Steps
Aug 12, 2009
Sitting in a dark theater watching characters come alive and their stories unfold is pure magic. As thrilling as the written word can be, visual interpretation is a whole other level of Heaven. Writing styles are as varied as the writers themselves. There are some basics, though, that can help get a screenplay started - a prequel to the script itself. Formatting is still a little way off at this point.
1. What Genre is the Screenplay?
Before word one is written, a screenwriter generally knows the type of movie she wants to write - action packed, sweet and romantic, documentary, animation. With the initial knowledge of the type of movie she will write, a screenwriter may also have a particular emotion that she wants to evoke in her audience. That emotion dictates much of the way the story is told.
2. Who is the Audience?
Once the genre is narrowed down, the question of who the viewing audience will be is answered, for the most part. Regardless of the potential cuts by the movie rating group, Sally Screenwriter probably knows who she wants her movie to speak to, whose lives she wants to touch. If children are the primary audience, Sally gears her storyline and characters to a younger group. If males between 17 and 34 are the targeted age, she aims for a much lower intellectual level.
3. The Logline – Describe the Movie
Sally can’t wait to tell someone about the super ideas she has for her film. As the plotlines come together and characters develop before her eyes, she wants a couple of close friends in her yoga group to feel the intensity of her story. But with little time between moves, she has to make her description short and sweet. She needs to boil the description of her screenplay down to a couple of sentences – a logline. The logline is a sentence or two in which Sally describes the basic premise of her movie as she moves from Four-Limbed Staff Pose into Upward Facing Dog.
4. The Treatment - Tell the Story
Given more time, Sally fleshes out the prequel to her script. She has the general idea of what she wants to take place and how the characters will interact. The treatment is where she writes out the whole movie from the first scene to the last in paragraphs describing the major events. Dialogue is not necessarily part of the treatment but Sally is a habitual note maker so she scribbles ideas for possible lines if something comes to her.
5. The Outline - Break it Down
Regardless of genre, full length movies have an average of 60 scenes, give or take. With this rough number in mind, Sally sets out to break her screenplay into approximately 60 sections, each of which is a scene. The outline lists each scene, numbered, from start to finish. The outline is more detailed than the treatment, yet still not in script format. When Sally shows a copy of her outline to her yoga instructor, he has a pretty good idea whether or not he wants to stand in line to see her film.
Successful Prequel
Feeling proud of herself, Sally happily completes the basic steps necessary for the prequel to her screenplay. After some revisions and additional guidance from her Screenplay 101 professor, she is ready to throw some dialogue into the mix. Before beginning the next step, she takes the afternoon off and sits in a dark theater, watching as characters on the big screen come alive and their stories unfold.
 |
