How To Write A Screenplay! Why you should NEVER google that.

HOW TO WRITE A SCREENPLAY!   On this week’s Story Love podcast I walk you through every stage of the screenwriting process:  finding your story, plotting, writing, how to approach feedback and rewriting PLUS the most crucial concept to succeeding as a screenwriter! 👏🏻

If you are unfamiliar with the terms I speak about on this podcast, consider my 16 Steps to a Screenplay Starter Kit which contains explainers on every thing I mention in this podcast plus the step by step system I use to finish a screenplay. 

Learn more here: https://www.amandamoresco.org/starterkit

About Story Love

Story Love is a podcast for writers and anyone else who loves to hear about creative processes, and writing experiences.

Hosted by screenwriter, director, and story consultant Amanda Moresco, the show is a space to talk honestly about the writing life, the emotional highs and lows, and what it really takes to keep going. Because no writer is an island. Writing is hard. Writers need love.

Connect with Amanda:

🌐 Website: https://www.amandamoresco.org

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amanda.moresco.wxs/

Free 15-Minute Clarity Call
A short, no-pressure call where I help you figure out what kind of support you need most right now: https://calendly.com/writingxstructureconsults/free-15-minute-phone-call

Free Weekly Writer Q&A (Discord)
Join me for a free weekly Q&A where writers ask questions, share struggles, and get unstuck together: https://discord.gg/tmD7bPJuEG

Free Weekly Newsletter
A weekly reminder in your inbox that you’re not alone. It includes, writing quotes, pdf resources and reminders about my upcoming Q&As and work...

Chapters

• 0:50 skip intro

Transcript

how-to-write-a-screenplay-why-you-should-never-google-that

[00:00:00] Alright, so thank you for joining me today on Story Love. I wanted to do an episode. Just on the topic, how do I write a screenplay, right? This is the question I get asked most often. How do I write a screenplay? And it's such a finicky answer because it's a finicky question, right? It's not a. One size fits all or here's the answer, I'm gonna Google it and Google's gonna give me the answer on how to write a screenplay.

This is a huge misconception that this is possible for you to Google. How do I write a screenplay? And you're gonna get the answer, and I'm gonna tell you why. I'm gonna tell you why there is no one answer to this and all of the different variables. That make it impossible to give that [00:01:00] answer. Alright, so the first question you have to ask yourself before you Google, how do I write a screenplay, is, why do you wanna write it?

10 different people can sit down at their computer to Google, how do I write a screenplay? And you're all writing it for different reasons. If you are a person who has. Been a writer in the past, and now you know, you've, you've written novels, you've written nonfiction, and now you want to get into screenwriting as a career.

You have an interest in learning the format of screenwriting, right? You already are a writer and you want to learn screenwriting. That's a different process than I'm an actor. I need to do work. I'm going to write my own film and I'm going to star in it, but I don't really wanna write screenplays. I don't really care about understanding the process of writing a screenplay.

It's just a means to, an immediate end is a different process. Same goes for directors [00:02:00] looking to, film their own stuff for their own reels and any and any other creative aspect of the filmmaking process. Right? These are very. Different people who are sitting down at this, the keyboard to Google this processes that work for one are not gonna work for the other.

So when I sit down, my whole passion is story structure. And I say it's gonna take four months to write a screenplay. And let me tell you why. Because you have to go through these steps and it's a, you know, you cannot rush it. That's gonna be fine for someone who wants to spend the rest of their life learning how to write screenplays.

But those of you who are out there who are just looking to write something fast so that you could star in it and you can shoot it, and your passion is not writing a great screenplay, I can understand how you would not care about really understanding how to write screenplays manuals like. Save the Cat or Sid Field's.

Screenplay are means to an end to get to the [00:03:00] finished product faster. So Sid Field's screenplay and Save the Cat. These are books that teach plot paradigm. Plot paradigm and story structure are two very, very different things, uh, but we'll get to that later anyway. So before you ask someone, how do I write a screenplay?

You have to be very clear about what you're looking for and why, right? Do you want the fast answer or do you really care about the craft of screenwriting? And you wanna learn it so that you can be a great screenwriter because you have a passion to tell stories. Cinematically, visually, screenwriting is the art of making your reader see, a screenplay's job is to make you see, if I'm a screenwriter, I need to understand the craft of creating a vehicle to make film sing to help the film.

Shine to let the airplane fly, we need a proper [00:04:00] vehicle, right? Your job as a screenwriter is to understand the purpose of the screenplay, which is the blueprint from which the film will be made. You are a blueprint writer. You're not a poet. You're not a novel writer, you are a maker of blueprints. You are an architect, so you have to really sit down and before you ask yourself or Google, how do you write a screenplay, why are you writing it?

You wanna really learn the art of being an architect of film. Different process once you determine why you wanna write screenplays, right? The next thing that you need to ask yourself after or before you Google, how do I write a screenplay, is, well, what style of writing suits you best, right? What genre are you interested in?

There's different subcategories on how to write screenplays depending on what genre you're looking to write in. So even if [00:05:00] you don't. No yet. You know, you wanna write screenplays, you have ideas for scenes, but you're not quite sure what your style is. You're not quite sure what exactly it is you wanna write.

Well, a great thing to do is to sit down and visualize your movie. What does it look like, right? So if you know, once you start visualizing what it looks like on screen, right? You're sitting in the audience, you're watching your movie, what does it look like? You can start picking out. Different archetypes of film and genre and go in that direction.

This is a great exercise for those of us who need training wheels. I have many pet peeves about screenwriting and filmmaking, but, but one of them is this. Ens argument about whether or not to learn story structure. If you are a one-off, like I said at the top, if you're not interested in really learning the craft of screenwriting, then you could probably stop listening.

Now, go by Save [00:06:00] the Cat, or go by Sid Fields's screenplay. Call it a day, bang out your script, and I wish you so much luck with it. So let's assume that from this point on. Those of us who are still with me, we care about being architects. A film, we are the architects. So if you have a desire to write a screenplay and you wanna learn how to do it, but you're a very new beginner, you need training wheels.

If you are learning to ride a bike, you can't take your training wheels off, you're gonna fall and hurt yourself. Or worse, you're gonna spend 10 years in screenwriting limbo with scripts that don't work and you don't understand why. But yet you don't wanna learn story structure because you don't wanna be like everybody else.

Everybody has to start riding the bike the same way. Put the training wheels on, stick with them until you've written about five screenplays minimum, and you start to feel your way through, right? Once you've done this at least maybe five times, let's say five is a number, then you can start [00:07:00] considering, let me take these wheels off and see what it feels like if I throw caution to the wind and just write my way through, write my way through words that cause me great pain.

A screenwriting is not the medium to write your way through. Unless you're Aaron Sorkin, right? It is all of these videos of all of these masters on YouTube running around saying things like, I don't really know where I'm going with my story. I just write it. That's great. If you're a master, you can't take that advice from Aaron Sorkin unless you've created your own West Wing and newsroom, and unless you've written Moneyball, don't talk to me about, I'm not going to follow story structure. I'm gonna write my way through. That's wonderful things that writers who understand what they're doing can do. If you are still on the bike and you've got the training wheels. You cannot take them off yet. That's the point of this portion of this podcast.

So you need to find out what style [00:08:00] you're writing in because you're gonna write a horror very differently than you're gonna write a sweeping dr. Family drama or a romantic comedy or a farce, right? You those different genres are going to require different techniques that you will need to learn, right?

So that's just a basic. So sit down, visualize your movie, what does it look like, right? Then use that. Archetype of story as your training wheels and just go in that direction. The next thing you wanna have in mind, the next thing you want to know in your brain before you sit down at a computer and type, how do I write a screenplay?

Is what is your writing process? If you are a writer or you have a desire to write and you cannot find the time to write, I'm very busy. I don't have time. I don't have time. What you're really telling me is that you have not discovered your process process. Is so important to a writer because another word for process is rhythm.

What is your rhythm for writing? And the only [00:09:00] way for you to find your rhythm is for you to write. So again, if you are coming in straight, cold, right? You, you are coming in, you know, you, you're you, you were in finance, and now you wanna start writing. Don't Google. How do I write a screenplay? First Learn.

What your writing process is, and the way you do that is stream of consciousness, right? So, you sit down at the same time every day and you write, and what you're gonna find is, well, I write better at 5:00 AM I write better in the middle of the afternoon when everybody's out of my house. I write better at midnight.

All, when the whole day is gone and all the lights are out and it's dark and it's just me in the darkness, that is when my mind turns on. Until you know that, until, you know what? Just this very specific, specific thing of what time of day do I write? Best until you know that you are never gonna finish a screenplay.

I mean, it's screenplay, it [00:10:00] takes dedication. Any type of writing, novel writing, any, anything you're gonna write. It takes dedication. And we're all busy. We're not all lucky enough to be paid writers. We're the only thing we have to focus on is writing. Right. That's the dream, right? But we're not all there.

So before you Google, how do I write a screenplay? You better understand when you're gonna write. What's the timeframe. Some people can sit down and write for three hours straight. Not me. That's not me. I'll tell you that right now. It's not me. So what I do. Is I write in two and a half hour segments when I'm working on other projects.

I will write two and a half hours in the morning and I'll write two and a half hours at night, and that is, that is my brain capacity. I usually cannot go. Without having a break in those segments. And the thing that's great about the way that I approach screenwriting is that if you've done your story work ahead of time, you can write a screenplay [00:11:00] in six weeks.

That way, anybody who tells you that it's gonna take less than minimum of six weeks to write a screenplay is not a screenwriter. There's someone who's writing a screenplay for other means. Alright, so keep in mind when you're having this conversation about how to write a screenplay, the prerequisite information is, why are you writing it and how many screenplays do you intend to write?

We're all coming to the table, having different conversations at the same time about how to write screenplays. What's your why? You're gonna sit down and you're gonna be so excited to write your story. And two or three weeks in, maybe two months in, you're gonna get stuck in the middle. Even Aaron Sorkin's gonna get stuck in the middle of a screenplay because, hey, newsflash, screenwriting is so hard when you do it right, when you do it well, when you do it the way it's supposed to be done, it's incredibly difficult.

So unless you know why you're writing this screenplay. You're gonna give up. It's just like exercise, right? What's your why for going to the gym? Because if you [00:12:00] don't believe in your why, you're not gonna go every day. Okay? So what's your why? If, if you're writing a screenplay because you want to, that's fun, that's fine.

And, and absolutely do that. But just know that's not gonna get you to your desk every single day. That passion's gonna run out. So what's your why? Always have an end goal. Well, deadlines are our writer's best friend, right? We're all procrastinators, we're all artists. Otherwise, we wouldn't be trying to do this.

Probably we're always suggest finding some kind of deadline, I'm gonna have a reading at on this date with these people, and I'm going to invite someone to come and hear it.

That has some sort of stakes involved so that I will stick to this process and that is my why. I have an end goal. So you create your why. Now all of a sudden you have a reason to show up every day other than I enjoy screenwriting or I wanna be a screenwriter eventually. Now you Google, how do I write a [00:13:00] screenplay?

You know all your answers. You know why you're writing it. You know what your end goal is and you know what kind of writer you are. Alright, there are many different avenues now for you to figure out how to write your screenplay, right? So like we said, up top plot paradigm only is the fast way, right?

Save the Cat screenplay by Sid Field. These are the two most popular plot paradigm books. This is not story structure. This is plot paradigm. This is, I am just gonna figure out what are my plot points? What are these rising actions and falling actions so that I can sit down and very quickly come up with ideas on how to hit these plot points.

This is where you hear the words formula. This is where people who are not looking for a fast solution are so afraid of, and they're so. Against this formula, the formulaic screenwriting. That's, we're talking about plot and plot paradigm. However, if you want a fast answer, how do you write a screenplay?

Go pick up one [00:14:00] of those books. You can write it fast. The pros are, you'll probably be able to write a screenplay fast. The cons are, it's going to be formulaic and it's going to have the same, plot points as every other movie because they're telling you it's, it's paint by numbers. It's fill in the blanks.

You need a fast answer. I have no problem with it. Also, you're brand, brand new and you don't really understand story structure or what I'm about to talk to you about and you just wanna write, right? This is Training wheels save the Cat and Sid Field screenplay can be considered as training wheels.

But when you're ready to advance, there's a lot more that goes into screenwriting than plot paradigm.

I'm going to talk to you about what I've learned from professionals in the business over 20 years. Okay?

You get an idea, you're starting to see scenes in your head, characters dialogue. You're hearing these things. I have a great idea for a movie. Well, you can't write that. That's stage one. Stage one is the idea. You have [00:15:00] to sit with it right now.

You have to decide the form. The process is, I have an idea. Well, don't just assume it's a screenplay. Sit with it for a little while as this idea starts to percolate, what are you seeing? Are is, is this. Little moments that your characters are going through and you wanna spend a whole hour watching them make one or two decisions as they solve little problems.

Each episode that's a television show. My show shows are, television shows are characters we love or love to hate. Fixing problems. That's television. So if you have a world in your head that creates new problems every single day, and the problems get worse and worse and worse and worse.

Whether you're writing comedy or drama, that's the truth of it, that you've, maybe you've got a television show on your hands. If you've got a character in your mind who starts one way and ends another over a finite period of [00:16:00] time, they go on this journey. There's this story of a battle, right? The story of an action line, right?

An action. Your story is an action. I'm telling the story of, of. Fighter who wins the biggest fight of his life. I'm telling the story of two people who fall in love, but at the end, one of them dies. That's a movie, right? One action line. One journey. One event. That's a movie, right? Novels, podcasts, stage plays.

They all have different forms. So before you say, I have a great idea for a new a movie. Sit with it. Sit with it. What form of the idea? Gets you the most mileage and the way that you decide is how you wanna tell the story. And like I said, if you can see the world with the characters in it.

Solving problems over and over within this interesting world. You've got a television show on your hands, but just because you [00:17:00] have an idea for a feature doesn't mean that can be a television show. It's two totally different things. So before you jump to, I have a great idea for make sure you're understanding what each form calls for and the form that gives you the most mileage for your idea is the way to go.

Let's say. You have an idea for a story, a great idea, and now you've decided, all right. This is a finite, this is a finite storyline. It's about one action. I've picked the action. I know what I'm writing about. I'm gonna write a screenplay, and now I'm gonna Google it. How do I write a screenplay? Okay. First thing you have to do when you write your screenplay.

Is, find your story. You cannot jump from, I have an idea for a screenplay to, I'm going to write it. You're going from step one to step five. It's actually impossible. You cannot do it. Don't do it unless you, you don't care about learning how to write a screenplay, right? Wanna learn how to write a screenplay?

You're gonna get your idea, you're gonna decide the [00:18:00] form, and now you are gonna spend a minimum of two weeks. I mean, the bare minimum is 10 days, Monday through Friday, showing up for five hours a day, two and a half in the morning, two and a half at night. Just set a clock, get up before work before you go to bed.

Whatever you're gonna do. If you can't do it twice, you have to at least do it once in the very beginning. If you download my Blob Doc, this is all in. The blob document for features. I'll get to that at the end. I'll leave a little link in the show notes. It says a half hour a day. So if you're in the very, very beginning stages and you've never done this before, you still have your job where you work minimum 40 hours a week and you're exhausted.

Just find a half an hour a day lunchtime as you're doing your, as you're drinking your morning coffee before you go to bed, half an hour, and as you get more in the habit of finding your process. Up it to an hour until you can get to two and a half hours, until you can get to two and a half hours twice a day.

Let me tell you something right [00:19:00] now, I've done it many times. Two and a half hours, twice a day will get you a screenplay. Two and a half hours, twice a day, Monday through Friday. You will end up with a screenplay in four months. There is a infographic on my Instagram you can find it that lays out this exact process.

Over the summer, I'm gonna be doing a screenwriting intensive that we can go through this process together and at the end of four months, if you stick with the process, you will have a screenplay. Two and a half hours a day, twice a day will get you a screenplay. If you're a brand new screenwriter and you are not in that rhythm, you can start out with a half an hour bind your process.

Then sit down and find your story. So the way that you find your story is by using Joseph Campbell's Monomyth. Joseph Campbell was a philosopher who studied all the great myths. Once again, I have a mini course that will go through every single stage of the monomyth with you. Basically what the [00:20:00] monomyth is, it's a map that will help you chart.

Your hero's journey that will give you a cathartic story. We do not have to be imaginary geniuses. We are writing blueprints for film, and Joseph Campbell gave us the map and we just refuse to use it. I do not know why. I don't know what. What the backlash is of refusing to use the monomyth, and I do believe that it comes from the misconception that monomyth is the same thing as plot paradigm.

It is absolutely not. The monomyth is suggestive. It is symbolic. Your hero goes on a journey. They start one way. In an ordinary world, there is a call to action, an inciting incident that sets them on their journey. The journey has stakes. It's dangerous, so they decide they're not gonna do it at first until.

Someone, a mentor comes to them or something that's acting like a mentor could be anything you want. I'm not telling you what [00:21:00] mentor to write, I'm just telling you that in order for a cathartic journey, your journey needs to have stakes. And the way to show stakes is that your hero needs to deny it, and then something needs to coax them into crossing the threshold into a new world where they're gonna face.

This problem at the end of your act two, this big mounting problem, whatever it is, no matter what you're writing. That's the way we're going that way towards this thing that I'm either hoping for or dreading. However, at the top of Act two, I'm not ready to face that battle. I have to become ready. And so through the course of act too, I have to pass all of these tests.

And trials, and I have to gain allies and I have to make enemies, and I have to become a worthy hero so that by the time I get to the battle, the ordeal, the situation that I've been dreading or hoping for, I am now worthy to accomplish it. Or I'm worthy enough that when I fail, it's going to inspire deep feelings within the viewer.[00:22:00] 

I didn't make this up. You don't have to make this up. Joseph Campbell studied myths and he is telling us how to do it. You can Google Chris Vogler's memo right now. It will break down the monomyth.

At the end of the monomyth, your, your character wins or loses. They resurrect, they go back home with the prize that they've won as this new person. Nowhere in the monomyth did I tell you what to write?

I told you how to construct a cathartic journey, and now you write it based on the story you're telling. So you decide what story am I telling? Let me paste in the pieces of the monomyth so that now I know the journey I'm on. Right? This is how you form a screenplay. You find your story that what is the beginning, the middle.

An end. There is so much intricacy involved in finding the story that I'm not gonna get into on this podcast. For instance, how do you find the beginning, middle, and an end?

There are different ways of how to find the story, but the best way for me is to figure out what the [00:23:00] ordeal is and work backwards from there. So the ordeal is the big event at the end of act two that we're either hoping for or dreading, and then put your hero as far away from. That moment as you can within the timeline of that story.

Alright, so let's say you've examined the monomyth.

And you have figured out the story that you're telling. And when I say story, I mean journey. You figured out the journey of your story, right? What the dangers are and why this journey has stakes. You have an idea of the ordinary world. The beginning, you have an idea of the call to action, the inciting incident.

You have an idea of the things that make the journey dangerous about all of the allies that they will gain, and the enemies that they will make, and who they will be by the end of the journey based on what they accomplished or did not accomplish. This is a story, and by the way, when I'm saying find your story.

[00:24:00] I am not saying write it. No interiors, no exteriors. , We are generally painting the picture. Broad strokes. The thing that stifles us as writers is the need to know the answers. So when you say you have writer's block, you don't have writer's block, you have answers block.

You need answers, and you don't have them. And so you're blank. This need to fill the page with coherent answers. Of what to write. That is not the process. If you have writer's block, you are skipping a stage in the process. You'll probably have an idea and you're trying to write it.

You cannot do that. That's why you're blocked. So when you are finding the story, this is still stream of consciousness, unformed ideas on a page that you've typed out or scribbled down. You do not have to have answers. You are finding it. Okay. So once you found it, once you have a complete journey, [00:25:00] now you're gonna plot it.

Now the time comes for answers where you're gonna sit down and you're gonna say, all right, I know what my ordinary world is. I know who my character is. They work at this place. They, they, they're friends with these people. Okay, so then my scene one is gonna be, let's, you know, we meet her at work. So I'm gonna get an index card out.

And I'm gonna write act one, and I'm gonna take a push pin and I'm gonna put it in a corkboard and it says Act one. And on the next card I'm gonna take another index card and I'm gonna say, meet Jane at work. Right? And then I'm gonna say, what happens? At work to let me know who Jane is, and this is where Aristotle comes in.

This is where Poetics comes in the plotting and understanding that in every scene there needs to be an incident. An incident needs to happen. Your character needs to take an action. They need to make a decision, [00:26:00] and based on that decision and the action that they take, it leads the next scene to happen.

So I've got this tapestry of a journey that I'm on, but now I'm going to tell it mathematically and I'm going to say I am the architecture of story. So I need to know what happens in every single scene, because when I write it, I am going to construct the scenes around the incidents. Another way to think of an incident is the event.

So again, those of us who are actors. Know that when you pick up any scene, the first thing you're gonna do is find the event. Hopefully, if you're getting any acting, uh, lessons worth their weight, you're being taught this, right? So, um, you pick up the scene, you find the event. Once the event, the whole entire scene can be constructed around the event.

Who am I at the top of the scene? What do I want? I want this event to occur. The [00:27:00] event occurs either I get what I want or I don't. And then what happens from that? That's how you write a scene. You cannot write that scene unless you have a very specific knowledge of what that event is, what that incident is, and that is the purpose of plotting.

That is the purpose of carding. Every single screenplay I've been involved in, every single television show I've been involved in, this is the process that occurs before anyone writes. Interior, exterior, fade. In, fade out, we get a card and we write the incident so that when I sit down to write it, I know what I'm writing.

Dialogue description, it's irrelevant. We are architects of the blueprint that is going to make the film. We are a cog in a wheel of a giant machine, and we have to do our job. If we want the machine to put out a product that has value that we can be proud of, that we can look at [00:28:00] and marvel at. The genius of it starts here.

It starts on these cards and understanding what every incident is that pushes the story forward. And this is the part that everybody skips. 'cause this is the part, this is the real math, but this is what takes. A screenwriter. You're not a screenwriter until you learn how to do this. If you don't know how to do this, you are a novel writer who's writing in interiors and exteriors.

You're a dialogue writer who knows how to use final draft if you don't know how to plot. And I'm harsh about that only because it's true. Once again, there is a lot of, uh, much more in depth explanation on how to use these cards. And, uh, what they look like in my mini course. Well, now it's time to write.

We finally made it. Now we've, what have we gone through? We've gone through 1, 2, 3, 4. This is the fifth step. Writing is the fifth step. You can't say, I have an idea and then write it. You've [00:29:00] skipped over four major, major. Processes before you can write the hubris involved, to think that you have an idea and you're gonna sit down and write it without doing any prep is insane.

It's an insult to the art of screenwriting. So assuming you're still with me, meaning that you are a person who wants to learn screenwriting and not just write a screenplay fast. Now it's time to write, and now I know the story so well. I'm living in it because guess what? I have spent so much time finding the journey.

I have spent so much time thinking about every single scene that now I'm living so deep in this story that when I sit down and I'm ready to write interior, I am going to write it so well. It's just gonna fly out of me. Not only that, I have a map, so if I get lost, I, there's no such thing as writer's block.

Let's talk about it. So you hear the term, I've hit a wall. [00:30:00] That means I've found the story, I've plotted it. I sit down to write, it doesn't feel right because now that I'm actually living in the character's body, I think, in my mind, when I wrote the card, I thought the character would do this, but now that I'm sitting here and I'm living and breathing in my character, and I'm, I'm. Hearing the words that they're saying and they're coming out of my fingertips. Right? It does something doesn't feel right. All right. I've hit a wall.

Let me press pause and let me go back to my cards and let me look. I made a decision arbitrarily probably to get to the end of the cards, which is fine. Screenwriting is a layering process. You honor this stage that you're in now that I'm here. I'm thinking maybe there's something wrong with these cards, so let me go back and live.

And now that I know what I know about the character, let me recard. If you hit a wall in, you're writing, it's not called writer's block. It's impossible to have writer's block with this process. If you've hit a wall and what you're writing doesn't feel right, you do not write your way through. You stop writing and [00:31:00] you go back to the cards because your problem's in your plot.

Writing is the last thing we do. It's the decoration. It is the poetry. Writing is the fun part. Your problem's not in your writing. If you've. Hit a wall. The problem's in your plot, well, if you haven't done this process, you don't have a gorgeous cork BART with 30 cards on it where you can see your whole story one piece at a time.

Of course, you're not gonna be able to write it, you can't even see it. What are you even thinking about? It's a muddled jumble of images in your head. Impossible. Of course you're stuck. No. If you've hit a wall, there's a problem in your plot. Go back to your cards. And now instead of having to delete pages and pages worth of scenes that don't work now, instead of breaking my own heart by having to delete my writing, I stop writing and I go back and I take a little push pin out of my board and I remove some cards that have five words on them.

Throw them in the garbage. And I look at my plot. Do you know how much easier [00:32:00] that is than rewriting days of work that doesn't work? Seems like this is harder. I promise you it's not. It's difficult. It's the process of it is hard, right? But it doesn't make writing harder. Writing's already hard. So that's it.

So then you sit down and you write it, and then you figure it out. Oh, I know what the problem is. When I was plotting, I thought that they would go this way, but now that I'm living, they wouldn't, they'd make a left. They'd make this decision instead. Now let me fix the cards based on this new incident.

They could never make the decision I thought they would make after. Now that I'm writing and I'm, they're my muse and I'm writing as them. I know that now, okay, let me go back and repl my cards based on this new decision and this new repercussion of the event, and then like a domino effect, everything will ripple out.

Now you're just rewriting cards. You're not rewriting days worth of writing work. Now you've got your draft, right? You [00:33:00] make it to the end. You've, you're gonna do your reading that you prescheduled, so you knew you would have a deadline, right? And you do your reading. And from that reading, you're gonna get feedback.

So I won't stay too much longer because this is already been a super long podcast, but I just wanna give you a little word about feedback. When you write a script and you get feedback very often what happens to writers, especially new writers. Is that feedback sends them spiraling in many different directions and they don't know where to go.

They've get, they're getting notes from all different people. The notes all seem good, but now they don't know how to make the decisions on how to rewrite. They don't know who to listen to. I. They don't know which notes are valid and which notes aren't every, you're always gonna have notes. There's always gonna be someone who wants to talk about what's wrong with your screenplay, everywhere you go, and that your job as a screenwriter is to listen because you want to find the holes.

First of all, you're not gonna find the holes. You're, you're too close to it. You can't see the forest for the trees. So you need trusted eyes. One of the best assets about being a seasoned screenwriter, if that is, that [00:34:00] you know who to trust, right? So right now in my circle, I have a handful of people in my palm.

That when I need something read, I have a reading, and I invite these people because I hold them in such high esteem. I know that they're smart. I know that when they give me a note, I have to listen because I trust them. That's taken me. Way over a decade, almost just as much time as I've been in this business to figure out, to, to procure my, my, my crew, right?

And within this handful of people, if I ask them to be at a reading, they will drop everything and be at a reading. And the reason why they will do that is because I will do that for them. So hopefully on your writing journey, you will learn who thinks the same way as you. By the way, this is very, very much about taste.

This is such an important thing I wanna share with you. You can respect somebody. You can think they're smart if you don't like the stuff that they make, because it's [00:35:00] not your taste. You cannot have them in your crew. It's not a matter of intellectual opinion. It's a matter of style, right? If, if you have some, if you know someone who's very, very successful at Nickelodeon and you are, uh, writing a seven spinoff, like this is not gonna jive, right?

So you can respect people. You can like people very often. I, one big mistake I made very early on is that I like you as a person. You know, I don't feel awkward or uncomfortable around you, right? You're a safe space for me. I'll invite you in, but I don't really hold your work in high esteem, right?

I like your work. But it's not, on a level that's higher than mine. So let's be very, very careful about staying comfortable in a comfort zone with people who aren't pushing you to be better. Your, your, your core group of people should be people that inspire you to be better because they're doing better.

They're constantly trying to strive to be better. You [00:36:00] like the, their taste. You like their aesthetic, you like their style, right? It doesn't have to be the same as yours, but you have to respect it. And they're smart and, and, and, and smart in, let me not say smart, everybody. Everybody has their own form of smart, let me say, they speak the same language as you.

So I'm sitting in rooms many, many times with people who are super smart and I hear what they're saying and it's smart. And I'm like, you are speaking. I know what you're saying makes sense yet. I, it's not filtering through my brain and into my body for some reason. I mean, this is, this might be a me thing.

I have language issues. , I have communication blocks, but for the most part, I know that when I'm in a room with people who speak the same language as me, there is a flow between us that just brings the work higher and higher and higher. Those are the people that you drop everything for and you say, you need me, I'm there for you because I'm gonna need you.

Soon. This is how you create your group. And over the course of, of, again, 20 years is how long I've been doing this. I, I've been able to, um, procure [00:37:00] a a group of people who I immensely trust. If you don't have those trusted people that you go, wow, if that person gave me a note, I have to listen to it.

If you are not there yet, the way that you decipher what notes matter and what notes. Don't is by having gone through this process. Because I promise you, if you get an idea and you skip to step five, you're not gonna be confident in your story 'cause you don't know it. You're just writing, basically.

You've written dialogue with slug lines, if you have a screenplay that's dialogue with slug lines, you're gonna have a reading and you're gonna get 85 different notes and you're gonna have no way to go because you don't truly trust and know the story because you haven't sat with it for four months.

This is the truth. This is the way. If you watch the Mandalorian listen every single note you have to consider because very often what happens is you'll get a note and someone will give you a fix. This is something I learned from my father. This is one of the best lessons I learned from my dad so often, especially, especially executives.

[00:38:00] Especially studio people who are on the business ends of this, they don't know how to give a creative note, so they'll give you a fix. So they'll say, you know what, instead of the car chase, you should have an explosion. And you go, what the fuck is that note? And then all of a sudden you realize, no, there's something wrong with the car chase.

But they can't, they, they don't, they don't really truly understand storytelling or screenwriting, so they don't realize that the problem is in the car chase. They just think that something different would be better. And so you get a fix. Without a note, right? So keep your eye open for fixes. If people give you fixes, what they're really telling you is there's something wrong with what they, with what you wrote, but they don't know how to fix it.

So they're just giving you something different as opposed to fixing the car. Chase. I don't know what's wrong with it. I just know I would rather have a fire. But that's not a productive note. However, when you sit there and you say, okay, they, they didn't like it. You can dismiss it or you can say they had a problem with the car chase.

Let me just look at this in every single inch of this action sequence and figure out, [00:39:00] oh my gosh, here's the problem. Oh, the problem is there's a continuity issue. There's a, the problem's in the timing. How did I not see this until this person gave me this note that it should be an explosion, not a car chase.

And I've honored it. And now I go back and within fine tooth comb, I go over every single moment and make sure, oh, they just didn't realize that. This is a problem. I hope this is making sense because man, it blew my mind when I first really accepted this truth that there is really no such thing as a bad note.

It's just that sometimes they're being given in bad ways. That's not true. There, there are such things as bad notes, but, but a bad note usually comes from someone who doesn't understand what you're trying to write. And if you don't understand what you're trying to write, you're not gonna know that it's a bad note.

So, or you're not gonna know how to fix it. So even in the rewriting process rewriting is stage six. You can't get notes on a screenplay if you don't intricately understand your story. That's how I write a screenplay. [00:40:00] That's my process for writing a screenplay. It's not the only process, right?

It's the process that's worked for me, and it's the process that's worked for every single person that I've worked with. Perhaps it will work. For you. Maybe it won't, but hopefully if you are a brand new writer and you don't know any other way, you will try this because this is a way to get it done.

And then after you've done it a bunch of times and uh, you know, you feel confident in your own style and the own kind of stories you wanna tell, then you can say, all right, I maybe I'll try to. Skip a step. Maybe you're less of a mathematic storyteller. I'm a very, I'm a very mathematic storyteller.

I was, which is odd because I was terrible in math. Screenwriting, I should say, the math of screenwriting is so important, and I think it's because I see it so clearly as a blueprint, as an architectural blueprint. There's something else that I'd like to leave you with, [00:41:00] which is really understanding that you are a cog in a wheel.

And when you understand the process of filmmaking, when I, uh, started working as my father's assistant I also went through the ranks of being a pa and I did that on purpose because I wanted to see every aspect of it. So instead of staying in my father's writing room for a little bit I left and I went and I was a set pa, I was an accounting pa, I was an office PA before I just went to the writer's room and that, and, you know, I knew that that would be valuable.

Thought I was crazy. They're like, don't go to the set. Are you insane? They're horrible to PAs on set. Also his personal assistant. So every single project I'm watching from the phone call to, would you like to be involved in this? To the script writing, to the pre-production, to production, to post, to releases, to, you know.

Film festival circuits to getting [00:42:00] bought and distributed. I mean, I've seen it all. And so, um, I've directed my own shorts. I've been an actor. The reason why I bring all this up. It is because I have a very, very clear understanding about the role of a screenwriter, screenwriter's not God. Guess what, sorry?

I don't mean to burst your bubble. Just in the same way that the actors aren't Gods, the director's, not even the God, but the director's, the driver of the ship on a, in a film. He is the captain. She's the captain. And so when you understand how to give the film what it needs, all of a sudden you start thinking that you stop thinking that your dialogue is so precious.

You stop thinking that the way that you see it is the way it has to work out. It's just not the way that screenwriting works. Screenwriting is a means to an end. And when you truly understand the screenwriting process, the film making process, and you understand what your role [00:43:00] is. That's when you can really write great screenplays as well.

So I think that the best screenwriters are screenwriters who love films and love filmmaking and, and that extends to television as well. And understanding the vital, vital role that we play in the process and how to succeed in fulfilling our role to the best of our ability because. The ship can't sail without a ship, right?

So, I mean, you can be the captain of the ship all you want director, but if you don't have a ship that floats, you're sunk. We are important. We, you could say we are just as important. I don't ever wanna say that we're the most important. I could say that. I could say the script is the most important and people have said that and that's true.

But without a great director who understands the importance of the script, the ship is also not gonna sail. There are so many moving parts to filmmaking. And we all have to work together. And hopefully, I wish you so much luck in finding a crew who on of people who understand their [00:44:00] place in the wheel of the machine.

Because when you are on a set, when you are on a production where everybody understands the vital importance that they're bringing, but also that they are a cog that works with everybody else and they understand the vital importance of also everybody else's department. That is when magic happens, and there's nothing more magical than that.