Anybody Can Write a Film (Demystifying the Screenwriting Process)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication (except in the context of international ‘Fair use’ laws) may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author ‘Atul Taishete’.

Dedicated to my amazing and wonderful parents, Ashok and Jaishree Taishete, without whose unflinching support on all my crazy life decisions, I would have probably been banging my head on a wall somewhere

"To make a great film,

you need three things ...

the script, the script, and the script"

- Alfred Hitchcock

CONTENTS

Chapter 1: What this book tries to achieve

Chapter 2: What is a Screenplay?

Chapter 3: The Idea

Chapter 4: The Notes

Chapter 5: The Story

Chapter 6: The Form or Structure

Chapter 7: The Plot Outline / Step Outline / One Line / Scene Order

Chapter 8: The Screenplay (and Dialogue)

Chapter 9: Case study - The step-by-step writing of Notting Hill

Chapter 9A: Notting Hill - The Idea

Chapter 9B: Notting Hill - The Notes

Chapter 9C: Notting Hill - The Story

Chapter 9D: Notting Hill - The Form or Structure

Chapter 9E: Notting Hill – The Plot Outline / Step Outline / One Line / Scene Order

Chapter 9F: Notting Hill - The Screenplay

Chapter 10: Once we finish the Screenplay

Chapter 11: Writing a web series or a television show

Chapter 12: Converting a book into a Screenplay

Chapter 13: Writing a book using the ‘One Line’ process

Chapter 14: Caveats and Advice

Chapter 15: The hard road to finding magic

CHAPTER 1

WHAT THIS BOOK TRIES TO ACHIEVE

At the outset, let me clarify that all of what I am going to expound from hereon is my personal experience as a practicing writer, director and, more importantly, an audience. This is more of a practitioner’s handbook of a screenwriting process which has worked well for me so far. Hopefully, it will work well for anybody reading this book too.

SO, CAN ANYBODY ACTUALLY WRITE A FILM?

It is common sense that we cannot write unless we are interested in at least some kind of writing to begin with, but clearly, anybody who is genuinely interested in writing and has the three virtues of patience, discipline and persistence can write a film. There is no magic involved. It is simply about a passion for writing and a willingness to work hard. If we love writing and are willing to put in the hours, my belief is, virtually anybody can write a film.

There is an interesting anecdote about how I ended up writing this book. I had this film idea which I tried writing with some friends who were writers but had never written a film before. We tried for weeks but it was just not working out. It took me some time to realise that film writing is a different skill from a journalistic piece, a novel, or an advertising copy and why my otherwise talented writer friends couldn’t develop the screenplay was simply because they either didn’t understand the process or were naturally feeling intimidated by it.  However, once tutored and eased into the task, it was pretty much smooth sailing from thereon.

There is another simple reason why any of us can write a film. In real life, aren’t we narrating stories from our lives to our friends, family and even strangers all the time? Simple stories like how we got home in the middle of a flood or what occurred at work or the story of how we met our partners. These are personal anecdotes but in the bigger scheme of things, these are also stories nonetheless, so if we can narrate stories, we can most definitely write them. It then just boils down to whether we believe we are writers or not ... and even if we believe we are writers, all of us need a little help and guidance when we start out. This is exactly where this book comes in. With this book, I hope to convey my point of view as simply as possible and in a language easy to comprehend for anybody interested in writing screenplays. That is why, as I suggest and discuss the process to write screenplays, I will try to use as little jargon as possible.

CUT THE JARGON

In my limited experience with film schools, I realised that most screenwriting institutes and academies have these reams of course material. Some of it is basic, some of it not, but almost all of it is loaded with terms or some kind of coinage even for the simplest of concepts. Too much jargon makes it seem like it is some complex task to write a film, which, in my opinion, it isn’t. I believe that the writing process is simple and should be understood simply. Too much jargon either dissuades aspiring writers or makes them feel that there is a magic formula to writing when there clearly is none. Writing can only be learned by writing and writing incessantly. I don’t think there is any other way.

AVOID COMPLICATING WHAT WE ALREADY KNOW

What I have avoided completely in this book is spoon-feeding the simple stuff like basic explanations on what a character or a story is. My view is that we are already aware of basic concepts regarding story, characters, and plots, because of all the reading and viewing we have done all our lives. That kind of instinctive understanding is a result of the tales from Indian and Greek mythologies, Peter Pans, Cinderellas, and such other fairy tales that we have read and heard since we were children. That is to say, even a first grader writing for a school assignment will write a story with characters and a plot in it. That is why, in this book, I will be avoiding the basic stuff and cutting directly to the chase and hopefully be able to convey, how simple writing a film is.

FIND AN OPTIMUM PROCEDURE

Though most of us intuitively know at least the basics of a story, what most beginner screenwriters lack, is a process. What happens with a lot of writers is that they think of an idea and almost immediately start writing or typing the screenplay. This book is more of a procedural, where I suggest a more organised step-by-step method towards writing a screenplay, so that there is minimum wastage of both time and the written word.

Let me explain what I am trying to achieve with an example. Imagine we want to watch a newly released film in the theatre. There are clearly different ways of doing this, like we might decide to go to the theatre directly only to realise that the show has been sold out and the tickets are unavailable, or that the film is not playing in that theatre, and we may have to find another cinema to go to. On the other hand, what if we had followed a different process like checked the theatres in which the film is playing, booked a ticket on the internet and then reached the cinema hall on time. In the last case, we would have seen the film with the least amount of wastage of time and effort. That would be the optimum process. That is exactly what we are trying to do with this book. Find the fastest and optimum procedure to write a screenplay.

SAY IT WITH EXAMPLES

After finishing film school, it was only through trial and error and working with a certain writer-director (who I am not sure would want to be named) that helped me unlearn and understand writing a little better. I realised that any book on writing is of little use if a reader cannot connect a concept to a real film example. That is why explaining writing with scenes from films is exactly the template I am going to follow here. Throughout this book, be assured that no guideline will be suggested unless backed by a specific example of how that guideline applies to a film or a scene in a film.

Now here is something very important to remember while reading this book. I have used quite a few examples to explain what I mean when I suggest a guideline in writing screenplays. My advice to the reader is to not look at any example, suggested in this book, from a point of view of whether the reader likes or dislikes the film it is from, because taste in cinema is finally personal to each of us. Instead, try and understand how the example applies to the guideline or the point being made.

DEMYSTIFY THE LANGUAGE AND THE PROCESS

One other thing that this book will do is to try and explain concepts in a language we already understand it in. That is why the language of this book is largely colloquial and personal. I would ideally like this book to be a conversation on writing films more than anything else.

My personal view has always been that writing is very innate and more on instinct but, as writers, most of us may still need to be guided through the process. The principal purpose of this book is to demystify the process of writing so that anybody who has the passion to write and is willing to put in the hard work will be able to write a film. I hope you enjoy reading this book but more importantly, I hope it helps existing writers write better. I also hope this book helps writers, who have never written a screenplay before, to write one. It would be extremely satisfying for me if these goals were met.

So how does it all work? What exactly is writing films about?

When we write a film, we basically write what we call a ‘Screenplay’. What exactly is a ‘Screenplay’?

CHAPTER 2

WHAT IS A SCREENPLAY?

Let us understand what we mean by a screenplay as simply as we can.

‘A screenplay is simply as the word suggests ... how a film plays out on the screen ... so, say if we were watching a film and we started writing down each and everything that was happening on screen, by the end of the film, we would have the screenplay of the film’.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A SCREENPLAY AND A NOVEL

We can generally define a screenplay as the abridged version of a novel. If one were to write a novel out of a screenplay, it would be a task because the writer would then have to describe everything that is playing on the screen. The big challenge for any novel writer is to present the world of his/her story exclusively through words. Every location, character, prop must be detailed out because while reading a novel, the reader needs to simultaneously imagine all of these and more. With screenplays, one has the liberty to be a little less explicit, like if a screenplay says ‘Location: Warehouse’, the audience will eventually see that warehouse on screen and hence one can get away with lesser details.

Of course, detailing even in screenplays helps, like if the screenplay describes the warehouse, the art director can create the warehouse exactly how the writer imagined it to be. Any screenplay should ideally be written, at least, a little like a novel, because it helps all the other filmmaking departments to see the film better. The paradox though, as explained ahead, is that too much detail in a screenplay can lead to some difficulty in gauging the final runtime of a film.

UNLIKE NOVELS, MOST FILMS HAVE A RUNTIME LIMIT

Technically, there are no page limits to a novel. A screenplay, on the other hand, has a time limit issue. Seldom, nowadays, do we see films with a runtime of more than 135 minutes.

Just two decades ago, India, which makes the highest number of narrative fiction features in the world, used to have films with running times of 170-180 minutes, the extra 25 minutes made up with 5-6 songs. Now even in India, film lengths do not exceed the standard 135 minutes. This has happened because of two reasons, decreasing audience attention spans and the tendency to fit in more shows on the same screen to create more business. This deletion of length in Indian films has been achieved by reducing and, in most cases, by doing away with songs completely, but we digress.

The point was about how too much detailing in screenplays can lead to a small issue in gauging the approximate runtime of the final film. The thumb rule in writing screenplays is one minute per page provided the page is formatted to conventional industry standards. Screenplay writing programs like ‘Final Draft’ have a default template that roughly translates to one minute of screen time per page.

Point is, it is a big deal within any film industry to, at the least, have an approximate idea of what the final runtime of any screenplay would be. This is simply because of how expensive it is to make films. Eventually, and exceptions aside, most films will not be allowed to pass the maximum length (including titles) of 135 minutes. If we end up writing a film which is more than that length, there is more than a good chance that the extra length will be edited out, which basically means that a lot of money we spent on shooting scenes will never make it to the final film. Finally, filmmaking is a business and no producer or studio in the world would like to waste money shooting stuff that is never going to make it to the final edit. That is why it is important to roughly time a film as we write it.

The Harry Potter books are great examples of how the volume of the books has had little to do with the length of the films that were eventually made, based on the same books:

1) Harry Potter and the philosopher’s stone

No. of pages in the book: 223 pages

Film Running Time: 152 minutes

2) Harry Potter and the chamber of secrets

No. of pages in the book: 251 pages

Film Running Time: 161 minutes

3) Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban

No. of pages in the book: 317 pages

Film Running Time: 142 minutes

4) Harry Potter and the goblet of fire

No. of pages in the book: 636 pages

Film Running Time: 157 minutes

5) Harry Potter and the order of the phoenix

No. of pages in the book: 766 pages

Film Running Time: 138 minutes

6) Harry Potter and the half-blood prince

No. of pages in the book: 607 pages

Film Running Time: 153 minutes

7) Harry Potter and the deathly hallows (Film is in two parts)

No. of pages in the book: 607 pages

Film Running Time: 276 (146 + 130) minutes

In a later chapter, we will discuss how to convert a book into a screenplay but for now, I hope we have understood the importance of having the right amount of detailing so that the length of a screenplay matches the acceptable runtime of a film.

THE SIX STEPS OF THE SCREENPLAY WRITING PROCESS

A feature film screenplay is at least a hundred pages. That means that as Screenwriters, we need to create at least a hundred pages of original content. Paradoxically speaking, it is not as difficult as it sounds, if we follow the right process ... and it is exactly as difficult as it sounds because we need to create a hundred pages worth of original content, so what exactly is this process?

In this book, the procedure for writing a screenplay will be laid down in six simple steps. These are:

The Idea

The Notes

The Story

The Form or Structure

The Plot Outline / Step Outline / One Line / Scene