Tag: play

Build Screenwriting Characters

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[found on thescriptlab.com]

“For a truly effective screenplay, you must know your characters backwards and forward. In screenwriting, the moment you begin to imagine character relationships – how your character deals with his parents, his siblings, his coworkers, and all that – you start to explore the world of your story, and suddenly scenes begin to emerge.

As you research your character (context, culture, occupation), creating details (attitudes, values, emotions), developing backstory (physiology, sociology, psychology), and establishing personality and behavior, you start putting the character in different situations in your mind, and you begin to imagine him or her in the most mundane and most exciting moments of his life.

The courage to deal with the trivial and banalities is something you should develop. Because often the best stories in screenwriting, are made from the most commonplace material, and if you don’t know how your character cooks dinner, does laundry, brushes his teeth, or what his little vexations are, his petty likes and dislikes, a dynamic, a full story will never happen.

Frank Daniel, the former chair of the Film Division at Columbia University and past dean of the School of Cinema-Television at USC, echos the point in five simple words: “A story starts with character.”

So if character is the key, and stories are only as good as the characters within them, you better create some damn, fine, outstanding characters.”

For more tips on writing screenplays from , click HERE.

[found on http://thescriptlab.com/screenwriting]

Billy Wilder on Screenwriting

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[found on writingclasses.com]

“Billy Wilder was one of the greatest writer/directors in film history, having co-written and directed such classics as Sunset Boulevard, Some Like it Hot, The Apartment, and Double Indemnity. What screenwriter wouldn’t want a little advice from him?

Well, here are some of Wilder’s screenwriting tips: [From Conversations with Wilder by Cameron Crowe] 

    1. The audience is fickle.
    2. Grab ‘em by the throat and never let ‘em go.
    3. Develop a clean line of action for your leading character.
    4. Know where you’re going.
    5. The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.
    6. If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.
    7. A tip from Lubitsch: Let the audience add up two plus two. They’ll love you forever.
    8. In doing voice-overs, be careful not to describe what the audience already sees. Add to what they’re seeing.
    9. The event that occurs at the second act curtain triggers the end of the movie.
    10. The third act must build, build, build in tempo and action until the last event, and then—that’s it. Don’t hang around.”
[found on http://www.writingclasses.com/InformationPages/index.php/PageID/270]

How to Write a Play

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[found on backstage.com]
“1. The play does not always start at the beginning. Sometimes the first scene you write ends up in the middle of the play. This happens because when I write, I’m really channeling the voices of my characters.
2. A play is made up of moments that the character experiences as the story is revealed.
3. Ernest Hemigway said: “Good writing is true writing.” The best writing comes from trusting your gut feeling!
4. Even though every play or story has a beginning, a climactic moment, and a resolution, i stay true to the story by not trying to control it.
5. Teach the audience through laughter. The audience is able then to sympathize with their struggles and acquire a new sense of understanding for the world in which these characters live.”
[found on http://www.backstage.com/advice-for-actors/first-person/5-tips-writing-play]