Newbie Scriptwriter

Scene Breakdown

Very excited. I polished up the mini-treatment of my story. An interesting thing happened. As I read through the prose, I began to get other ideas, so excitedly I eliminated some stale stuff, moved around some of the story and I am satisfied that I am ready to break the scenes down.  For anyone who isn't aware, The scene breakdown allows you to see the story in it's entirety. It helped me with the ending! Some suggest breaking down each scene on 3x5 cards. I still may do that but it's easier for me to put it on paper right now. The way most do it is by placing each scene on 3x5 cards and tacking them on a cork board so that one can see how each scene flows into the other. It also gives the writer an opportunity to move one scene and replace it with another. I figure I can do the same with the cut and paste function of my program.

So far, I've gotten Act I scenes 1-4. The breakdown should be a very simple explanation of what is in the scene.

Example: Act I/Scene 8 (Taken from Christopher Keane's "How to write a screenplay" pg. 92)

Sally and Beau in bedroom

Sally Crying

Beau guilty over his affair with Kit, Sally's friend

they fight, Beau, anguished, storms out

It begins.....

A first time for everything

Well here I am.  First time writing in a blog (feels like I'm writing in my diary again) and my first attempt at screenwriting.  Took my friend's advice to try screenplays since I'm always so unsatisfied with the way my novels read. Went to Barnes and Nobles and picked up a few "how to" books. Also did some research on the internet about formatting and development. Happy to see there are software programs that can help with this so you can concentrate on the actual story.  I'm midway through my second of two books I purchased and I've already written the mini-treatment of my screenplay.

That's a new one for me also. The mini-treatment reads like a four to five page story of the screen play, in prose. It's like giving someone the short version of a story.  According to Christopher Keane (the author of the book I'm reading about screenplays), its a great way to keep the focus of your story.  This has been a great thing for me. The most challenging part is telling the action parts of the story, not the emotional and cerebral parts. In other words, I had to re-direct my writing to tell the story as it's unfolding and steer away from talking about how the character is feeling, what the character is thinking and instead show it through action.  It was a fun exercise and helped me a great deal pen the ideas I have for the screenplay. The next step will be to break it down into scenes.

I guess by now you get that I'm methodical. I'm big on structure and doing some footwork before I actually start putting pen to paper. My hope is that with the extra prep in the beginning, I will be able to sit down and start my work and have a clearer direction of where I'm going....