MY WEEKEND: Horse racing, salsa dancing and coffee shop loitering. onto my screenwriting news:
1. I finished the first draft of my first full length feature. I’ll call this project UNTITLED ROAD TRIP MOVIE.
I would celebrate, but it’s freakin Monday…
I probably have a week or two of rewrites before it’s ready to send out. For those of you who are curious about my process, I have it at the bottom of my post.
2. The Nickelodeon fellowship application is due tomorrow. I need to submit a personal application (with amazingly open questions like, provide a half-page bio) and a show spec.
these could be my friends…
The hardest part is definitely the show spec. I’m currently working on one for Parks and Rec and for those of you who read my other blog, you would know that I work in parks and rec. SOUNDS PERFECT. SOUNDS AMAZING. SO EASY.
Anything but. I’ve never written within the confines of someone else’s work. I’ve also never written for T.V. before. I guess, I’m at that point where I’m debating whether to even apply this year, or whether I should wait til next year. I KNOW I’M HILARIOUS and GRAWSOME, but I hate submitting less than perfect work. Anyone else applying for it? I’ll update you on whether I actually did tomorrow (YEP, I threw a cliffhanger at you all).
3. I’m starting a new project - not sure which idea I want to expand on first. I will keep you posted.
As promised, The Road Trip Movie Process:
-About 4 months ago, I knew I wanted to write a road trip movie. I also knew that I wanted a very stubborn, controlling female lead. Starting with this, I realized I needed an antagonist and I also needed a reason for the road trip. This led me to my logline (for those of you who do not know, a logline is a brief summary of a film, often providing both a synopsis and an emotional “hook” to stimulate interest)
-I did extensive character studies of the main characters. This was seriously about twenty pages of handwritten notes. I wanted to know the characters inside and out. Later, I would ask myself how would Charlie (the protagonist) respond to this situation? Would she get angry? Would she bottle it inside? And the character studies would give me the groundwork to answer those questions.
-I did a three act outline that turned into a twenty page document. This was by far the longest part of the process. I rewrote and rewrote this. Tweaked things, added things. I have a screenwriting teacher, and he had two main corrections for me: my Act 2 and Act 3 were far too short. I also had to make sure that the main characters were the driving force of the film. I refused to start my script until my outline was solid.
-Once I felt that I liked my outline enough, I started the script. This was about a three week process (it would have been much faster, if I could have dedicated myself to it full time). Creating the outline saved me sooo much time with this. WRITE OUTLINES. And that’s where I am today.
