If you want not only to watch TV-series and movies, but to be one of their creators, you can try yourself as a screenwriter. Here are eight steps that will help you master this profession or write on this tricky topic as well. If you would like to write an essay about it, follow greatpaper.co.uk.
Step 1. Understand Reasons
Why did you decide to become a screenwriter? The answer can’t refer to “I want to become rich and famous” sphere. You will have both wellness and fame, but only if they are not the reasons of your choice.
You will reach success, leave lots of great things after yourself, make your activity useful for many people only if you like what you are going to do, if you are ready to give more than you take.
Love is a very rare feeling. All in all, we really love only few times in our lives. You should look for exactly this feeling when it comes to your profession.
Step 2. Answer Honestly If This Is Your Calling
How can you understand if you can speak about calling in your case? Calling is when the profession calls you, leaves invisible signs for you, and guides you through your life.
You love stories (listening to them, retelling them, collecting them, searching for them, reading them, and watching them).
You love listening to people (most of the time you spend as a listener, not a speaker, and you feel happy about that).
You like finding reasons of this or that event, and you understand two important things: that there are no just bad people, and that everything in the World has its own reason, hidden from the eyes of people, but not from the eyes of a scenarist, an author, a writer.
Step 3. Start Learning
There are two ways to go: entering any professional institution or starting to learn on your own. In the first case, you need to choose a teacher who does not conflict with your vision of this world.
Look for a person you like listening to, choose your Teacher intuitively.
Start studying on your own if there are reasons why official studying is not for you. Here is what you are going to need there: self-discipline (regular learning), recommendations (systemic material), and a person who already has some experience and respect in the field of screenwriting. He or she will be able to estimate your first works and give practical tips that are not described in books.
Screenwriting is a beautiful thing, but there are two big dangers in it. First, there are lots of myths. Screenwriters’ profession is connected to creativity and it is difficult to describe its mechanisms. Every author does what he or she can and things that work for the author will not always be acceptable for the reader. Second, screenwriter’s mastery is not about standard schemes and plot turns in dedicated places. You’ll need an experienced person to show you what works and what doesn’t.
Step 4. Write a Lot
At the very beginning of your way you should understand an important thing: you don’t have to wait for inspiration in order to write. You need everyday trainings, like Michael Phelps has when he gets prepared to swim four kilometers and get a new world record.
When you learn (and when you work, too), you just need to do exercises, to complete your job. Inventing stories and writing them down are your exercises. Take a topic of “Unexpected Turn” and invent 50 exercises for your mind.
For instance, take usual situations that happened to you during your day and make them sound trustable, interesting, and unexpected. Then choose another topic and create a complex of exercises to work out that element. This practice can teach you to be a screenwriter.
Step 5. Determine Your Creative Territory
When you worked out the necessary elements and learnt to stand on a field of screenplay mastery, it is important to understand what you can write about.
Speaking honestly, there can’t be any competition in creative professions because every person is unique. All screenwriters have their unique point of view, unique voice, way to perceive the world and to write. That is why it is important for you to understand what topics can be compelling for you, which of them you can study during long nights.
For instance, while one is good at the topic of relations with mothers, the other one describes losses excellently, the third one is a master of “human and robot” topic. Look for something that boosts your imagination and fills it with life.
Step 6. Say About Yourself
When you know your creative universe well, you should claim about yourself crazily loving to write about these or those topics. Start taking part in competitions (you can find them on the Internet), send your applications for stories to movie companies, meet directors and offer them the work on their or your ideas.
If you are only the beginner, it is good to agree on every offer, even if it won’t be paid.
Your task is to collect your portfolio. It is the only thing that gives you the right to enter the big market.
Step 7. Calm down Your Ego
This point is very important. If you think that you are always right and that your vision of the world is the only correct one, it will be difficult for you to work in movie industry. Both for you and the people you are going to meet.
Movie is about teamwork. In order to survive in a team, you need to learn how to be flexible. You have to understand that the story written by you is a common beautiful garden. And there are many people who can work in this garden even without your permission. In most cases, director’s or editor’s view helps to make this garden better.
So, be ready: there are no first drafts in screenwriters’ profession. The scenery that you created at the very beginning is about your own home joys. The real scenery will be created on its base, but it will never become the one they launch records on.
There can be situations when one story is rewritten up to 60-70 times. Sometimes, there is nothing left in it from your first draft.
But there is nothing personal in it. The team just tries to combine your creativeness with theirs, and with production as well.
If constant corrections and rewritings are going to pull you off course, write another story in your free time. This will give you the feeling of control upon the world where decisions depend on you only. As a result, you’ll find it much easier to be a screenwriter – a team player.
Step 8. Create a Movie as a Director
It is a proven fact that the screenwriter who made at least a short film once in their life, has a completely different attitude towards their main profession. He or she is going to understand some simple things about locations, for instance.
Or about how an actor can change a character to lead the story tone in another way. These things are beautiful, and you need to use them to make your plot stronger, and not to get disappointed if there are two locations for a feature film and if the actor is completely different from the one you imagined.
The more you know about your profession on both practical and theoretical levels, the faster your mastery grows.
Screenwriter is the one who stays. Everyone can feel fear, stress, insult, and irritation. It is important to stay, it is important to win. If you want to know everything about your character, place him or her into tough life conditions.
The same is for humans. Stay because you are the winner.