PROJEKT iVIEW : My First Screenplay
iView Author:
dazedandconfused
(Hyderabad, India)
EMAIL:
anbharadwaj [at] yahoo.com
I wrote ‘The End’ on it a couple of days back and
heaved a huge sigh of relief. I couldn’t write the
last few pages fast enough. I mean, writing an action
sequence is no fun, in my opinion. But I am getting
ahead of myself. Let me start from the beginning,
flashback and all that you know- Imagine the page
dissolving right in front of your eyes…
There I was, in one of the small bookstores in Banjara
Hills out here in Hyderabad when I chanced upon the
book titled ‘The Screen-writer’s Workbook’ by Syd
Field. Now, I am your regular PFC junkie who can only
dream about an alternate career in cinemascope while
his immediate reality is dealing with day-to-day
issues in his 2 to 10 IT job (9 to 5 in UK). But here
was a chance. I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to
me earlier. I mean, instead of procrastinating against
my family who nudged me into a mainstream Engg+MBA
rather than a liberal arts education, I could have so
easily done this so much sooner. Looking at the
scripts that Bollywood churns out as regularly as Ajit
Agarkar does length balls which go for a six, I didn’t
think I could do much worse. By the time I reached
home I was already visualizing a couple of scenes and
licking my lips.
The book is an interesting read by itself, even if one
is not trying to write a screenplay. It’s a step by
step procedure and about how even a novice like me can
take a good shot at writing a screenplay. Each chapter
ends with an exercise which I think if faithfully done
does help a lot. Anyway, I read the whole book (200
pages of it) in a couple of sittings and then sat down
to actually ‘do it’.
The first thing which the author asks you to do seems
pretty simple. Condense the story into three or four
sentences focusing on the subject, action and
character. I did that except that what I wrote seemed
pretty lame. Lets move on now, next chapter.
Next couple of chapters focused on the structure and
what Syd Field calls the ‘Paradigm’. He is really big
on that word and keeps harping on it time and again.
Essentially he asks you to split your story into three
acts and two plot points. This was a very useful
exercise as it helps you to keep track and not lose
your way when you get into the meaty part of actually
writing the damn stuff. ‘When you are in the in the
paradigm, you can’t see the paradigm.’
Four pages- that’s the next chapter. Write the story
in four pages. This took some time. It turned out that
I was really clear about Act 1 and Plot point 1 in my
head but was pretty vague about the rest. It took some
effort, but I managed it. Though now I was already
beginning to see why this was not going to be the
cakewalk that I had initially imagined this to be.
The next three chapters talk about creating characters
and you end up writing character biographies for your
main characters up to the point their role begins in
the movie. I wrote the biographies for the three main
characters in my story. This took close to a week or
even more I think and I ended up with about 15 pages
of their collective life stories till the time my
story begins. I didn’t really understand why I had to
write about the character’s parents when they didn’t
even figure in the main story but I was going with
blind faith. By the time I finished those biographies,
I was starting to ‘live’ with those characters in my
head and later whenever I seemed to get stuck with my
writing, they did all the writing for me.
That’s Part 1 of the book called Introduction, by the
way. Now we move into Part 2, called Execution.
Sorry, this has already become a longer write-up than
I imagined it would be, somewhat like my Act 1, so I
think I will stop here. Anyway, it’s not important.
What is important is that 45 days and 122 pages later,
I have finished the first draft. It’s been a wonderful
adventure and an extremely satisfying one. A couple of
friends have told me that I am completely wasting my
time but I disagree. Writing is its own reward. I am
never gonna be a rockstar but it’s not going to stop
me from strumming my acoustic guitar, I tell them.
Same difference.
The last couple of chapters of the book deal with the
rewrites. But I can no longer bear to even give a
complete reading to my screenplay anymore. I don’t
know why it’s like that at all. I am completely sapped
of all energy; almost as if I regret that the whole
project has almost ended. Not sure what the future
holds for this story of mine, will it ever see the
light of day or will it for ever be confined within
the depths of my hard disk?
So that’s when I thought I might as well check with
you people out here.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Congratulations. Put it away for at least 2 weeks preferably longer and don’t think about it. Come back to it fresh and read it. Don’t start re-writing till you go through the entire script.
I highly recommend Sol Stein’s “Stein on Writing”. He gives you a step by step method to approach the re-write from the general to the specific. He has edited many literary novels and scriptdoctored.
Good luck and do share your 3 line plot summary if you can. You should also register your script online at WGA (even if you are in India) and do the old school register mail a copy to yourself in a sealed envelope. Show it to people whose opinion you trust for feedback and don’t be defensive.
You have accomplished far more than most people.
Ever since I joined PFC…. I have been promising myself that I will write a script/screenplay one-day. It ain’t easy. It ain’t even easy to write crap. And guess how many pages I have written so far? None. I hate writing. I am lazy. I have a short concentration/interest span. I don’t want to write. But I do want to write. My die-lemma lies their-in.
and yep, take some heed to dabba’s advice
this sounds really rewarding dazed.. here’s hoping you’re able to churn out more and more, and hope one of these results in some fruition.. wishing you all the best!
Hello there.
Some introduction – I have written few short screenplays ranging from 8 min to 22 min. And currently working on my feature length screenplay (yes, i am way behind you -:) ). But i have read the book mentioned by you and also another book by Syd Field called – foundations of screenwriting and his video workshop etc. And also, taking workshops at Gotham screenwriting workshop, NYC.
i rewrote one of the 20 mins screenplay at least 8/10 times, i left counting. And i realized that the real writing happens in re-writing (at least for me). The first draft is kind of first thoughts . But after the first draft, one can look at it scene by scene(if the scene is flat, anything dramatic happening in the scene), character arc (how the character turns out from begining to end), dialogues (are dialogues flat/straight forward OR they have a subtext) (does dialogue sound like a conversation or no), does the screenplay preach etc. etc..
Somethings that i do if i get stuck/loose energy
- I go back to the original source that inspired me to write the story/screenplay
- take a week/10 days break and travel a bit, meet new people and observe their behaviour and their view of life etc.
- analyze movies from screenplay perspective, for that i watch a film 5 to 6 times back to back..
also, i have some rough notes from my workshop, shall you be interested i can forward it to you..
Good luck
Hemant.
Hi dazedandconfused,
can you share with me the bookstore where you bought the book from?
thanks and regards
raja ravi varma
@ dabba- Thanks a lot for your advice. Will do that- come back to it after a couple of weeks. Yes, and thanks for the registeration advice as well. Didn’t understand that old school advice- why should I register mail a copy to myself in a sealed envelope?
As for the three line plot summary, here goes-
“Vinay has been good friends and in love with Pooja for the past seven years and doesn
@Honhaar Goonda: You’re right when you say writing’s not easy. I was blogging regularly for about 18 months about this and that and I think it established a certain kind of writing disciple as I pushed myself to blog at least once a week. Somewhere I think that discipline helped me as I set out to write the screenplay.
But keep at it! Am sure you will be posting about it soon as well!
@Hemant Kumar: I am so jealous of you attending screenwriting workshops at NYC! Yes, please send any notes if you can email them to anbharadwaj[at]yahoo[dot]com
And thanks for the other advice as well about the rewrite. I think it helps if one can get critical feedback about one’s screenplay to know what doesn’t work though. I find myself not to be the right judge at all. Either I hate all of it or love the whole thing depending on my mood…
Need to catch hold of someone. Friends and family are not much help.
@striker: Thanks!
@Ravi Varma: I bought the book from Walden, LV Prasad Marg.
Congrats and it feels a lot more scary than it actually is. Is like getting a tattoo. You fret about getting an infection and all that but you so want the tattoo. The same applies to a script. I had such horrible dreams before I wrote my first Script and now I have about 6 full lebgth feature films scripts and none of them were easy but still the whole process of bouncing, writing and then re-writing gives you such a kick that its much better than orgasm :-)
Well here is to you Dude and keep on writing
Cheers,
Deepak
Congrats and it feels a lot more scary than it actually is. Is like getting a tattoo. You fret about getting an infection and all that but you so want the tattoo. The same applies to a script. I had such horrible dreams before I wrote my first Script and now I have about 6 full length feature films scripts and none of them were easy but still the whole process of bouncing, writing and then re-writing gives you such a kick that its much better than orgasm :-)
Well here is to you Dude and keep on writing
Cheers,
Deepak
dazedandconfused:hi, congrates for first step in film making. BTW, have u written the script in hindi? is it acceptable to write in english like this: “tumhara naam kya hai?” as i don’t know hindi typing.
@ Deepak: Thanks man! 6 scripts! Wow, you are way ahead man! Are any of them getting produced?
I would love to write more but am not sure if I will have the motivation if nothing’s gonna come out of it. I mean, screenwriting is not a pure form of writing anyways. It’s written so that it can be filmed. I will continue writing and blogging but not sure if more screenplays will happen. Lets see!
@Shailesh: You are asking the wrong guy, man! I myself am just a novice whose first screenplay probably isn’t really marked to market.
I have no idea how bollywood scripts are written. I think there’s no one way in which they are written anyway. I couldn’t find any publicly available resources to access any scripts as well.
I asked Onir the same question in one of his posts and what he said was to write in a way that you are most comfortable with and can express yourself best. So I went with that and wrote the whole thing in English. There were times when I was tempted to write Hindi Dialogues the way you mention but resisted the temptation as I thought it would make the screenplay a bit weird. I don’t know if that was a wise choice or not. Anyway, I have used a lot of words like ‘yaar’, ‘Bhaiya’, ‘Beti’ etc. where the translation didn’t seem to work esp. when they are used to address a person. Hope this was of any use- but like I said, am just a novice. Maybe people like ‘dabba’ can help.
@ D&C
In 2003 (if I am not mistaken) there was a plagiarism case in Mumbai against a Milind Soman produced and acted film where the writer actually won the case in court and was awarded damages!
As proof that their script/idea which the movie was based on or resembled strongly, this writer had a script register mailed to herself as proof of date of creation. The sealed letter was presented in court and opened and it was proven that her idea/story had been written like more than 3 years earlier and it had more than a passing resemblance to the Soman film. I don’t remember which movie this was. Love ke Formulay or something like that but it is an effective registration tool.
More than anything though, I suggested it so that you can feel free to share your script to get feedback and learn and improve without being concerned about plagiarism. No one hits a sixer right off the bat and if you have, then you should have no trouble hitting it again.
As for writing in hindi/english for indian movies, i have no experience nor advise. good luck.
Hi hemant,”i have some rough notes from my workshop”
Can you share it with me please? my mail id is ronyd@rediffmail.com
Hey Hemant.
Can you please share the notes with me too? My e-mail add is mailpratik-at-gmail-dot-com. Thanks a lot. Also, let me know which film-writing workshops you considered; I live in the US too and am very, very interested.
@ dabba
Yeh woh Rules – Pyaar ke Superhit Formula toh nahin? Kaafi theek-thaak picture thi … thanks for the advice btw
@Pratik/Dabba. yes the film was Pyaar Ke Superhit Formula. the writer was Urmi Juvekar. guess what heard that she is fighting a copyright infringment case against CNN/IBN now. love her energy and refusal to accept being cheated.