Screenwriting tips for beginners

Maura N.

The Last Black Unicorn
You are excited to become a screenwriter, but you don’t know where to start? Here are a few tips for you!

1. The hardest part is to get started

The hardest part about becoming a screenwriter is not to come up with the best idea, but to get started. Start by turning your day into your inspiration. Who did you met today? What were your thoughts? What dialogues did you have? How did they make you feel? After you start writing your first phrases, you will get in the mood for writing more.

2. Practice makes perfect!

Even if you do have the best idea, you still need the skills to write it down! For this reason, practice is very important. Write down your idea. The next day, try to rewrite it in a different way. You are your first judge, try to improve it a little bit each time you rewrite it.

3. Keep it real

Screenwriters have a rich imagination and you can come up with so many creative ideas. Don't forget to keep it real and show empathy for the human emotion and behavior. How would a character react to a given situation? Every scene has to be real and relatable. Even if you are creating a SF background, you still need to focus on this.

4. Let your characters do the action

Once you have characters, let them do the action. Let’s suppose your character is planning to steal a very expensive neck lance. For this purpose, your character will do many things – follow him as he talks with his partners in crime, as they plan up the robbery, etc.

5. The best story starts with the logline

You need to summarize your whole action in a sentence. What is the purpose of your story? What exactly is happening? If you cannot say it as simple as you can, it is no use to develop it as complex as you can.
 
In my opinion, one of the biggest problem with most scripts is that they are boring. Boring scripts will become boring movies and no one wants to watch a boring movie. It's not just the idea that needs to be outstanding. It's what actually happens and how. It can be a basic idea that happens in a way that makes you want to know what's next.
 
An old saying teaches us that every good project is 99% work and 1% idea. You need a solid idea to work on. If your idea is not good, you'll spend so many hours working on it and the movie will fall on a bad foundation. On the other hand, it doesn't matter if you have a good idea, if you are not able to make it appealing to the public. So each of these is important: idea and how you show it to the public
 

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