Screenplay

Earlier this month, I started work on a new screenplay that I hope to film in September.

Although I’ve written a number of screenplays, I feel that I’ve never quite “cracked” the process of screenwriting. I’ve ready many books on screenwriting technique, attended lectures on screenwriting and heeded the words of other screenwriters, but when I start a new screenplay, I always feel like I’m writing for the first time.

I’m currently reading through the Writer’s Guild of America West’s list of 101 Greatest Screenplays. The screenplays therein are a delight, but it’s important to remember that they are final drafts: written and rewritten many times to the enjoyable perfection I can read. Mistakes were made. At times they didn’t make sense. They all needed improvement prior to presentation.

I need to remember this as I write. The drafts I write can be critiqued and rethought, improved and polished, written and rewritten until their final presentation. That doesn’t call for any particular technique; it just calls for writing. Daily writing until that draft is finished, followed by consideration and rewriting, daily, until that draft has been finished. And so on.

It’s taken me so long to realise that excellence isn’t instant. It’s from constant effort and hard work; a full time job, in a way. This goes for writing, photography, filmmaking, drawing, indeed any creative or vocational pursuit. There’s no magic trick, just hard work.

I’ll be putting in this effort as I write this screenplay.