B) Read the article and see if the author has the same opinion as you. Make sure you know all the highlighted words.

Writing a Screenplay

“Audiences don’t know somebody sits down and writes a picture. They think the actors make it up as they go along, ” says Billy Wilder. The reality is different. The script is the basictool of the movie and television industry. How do these scripts appear? Where do ideas begin? What is the first step to create a script? The writer beginswith a blank page and must create a story, imagine the characters, plot-points and start to visualise the whole story. The journey from script to screen is long and difficult.

A screenplay is a form of creative writing. It has the structure of a play and it flows like music. A script consist s of 100 – 120 pages of dialogue and a few directions, which describe sets, locations and characters. Ideas come from within and without. Part of the writer’s job is to find the idea that will speak to millions. Every writer has different interests, likes and dislikes. French writer/director Francois Truffaut said, “20% of my material is autobiographical, 20% comes from newspapers, 20% from people I know and 20% is pure fiction. Fiction does not play a major part. I prefer to work from real life”. In contrast, Quentin Tarantino assimilates many ideas from films, television, books, comics and other elements of popular culture.

Beginning screenwriters often feel uncomfortable when they should find story ideas and design plots or story structures. When the concept is clear most writers turn to its structure and think of a natural beginning, middle and end. Usually they use a three-act structure as their basic building block. Producers look for originality, passion, an individual voice in the script, as well as for a person who is a craftsman and is not afraid to be different.

Agents, producers and movie studios receive hundreds of screenplays every year. So they don’t read the whole script, they ask you for a treatment. It is a brief outline of the story (5 – 10 pages) which presents a great opening that grasps the reader’s attention, a climax that strikes and a protagonist (or main character) that is interesting to follow. The treatment does not need to reflect every detail that will be in the screenplay. Some screenwriters start with a treatment to make the structure of a story clear and keep it as a plan for their future script.

When the story structure is in place, the characters are vivid and the dialogues sound natural the first draft of the script is complete. But the author often has to revise the script and to rewrite it. A film company may ask you for the second, third or fourth draft.

Ideally, rewriting is a process of new discoveries for the writer. With the initial draft the writer may now feel more confident and move to strengthen or sharpen a character. Perhaps a new theme emerges during the writing process and it needs further development.