We-Penguins.com

Come back soon!  This page under construction

Before you begin, you should realize that screenwriting is an alien art form.  There is no comparing this to that of writing a novel, magazine article, short story or other.  One of the challenges is to write your story with approximately 110 pages following all the rules & guidelines of story structure, script formatting and more. 

A screenplay is a work of art that is seen and heard.  How can that be you may ask?  Think about how you watch a movie.  You see the action and hear the dialogue, but you cannot see thoughts, emotion, nor ideas that are going on in the characters' minds.  

Sure, you must have heard someone say that they can write a better screenplay than what they just saw at the theaters or on TV.  Maybe you've even said that, but are you ready for the challenge?  A challenge that demands dedication, research, focus and a lot more for the Great American Screenplay.

The idea:  Begin with an idea, a thought, a sentence, paragraph or whatever you "see" as the basic foundation to your story.  The idea can come from a number of places.  The newspapers, history, your own life or other.  Whatever it is it should be adaptable for a screenplay.

Develop your idea into a story with a treatment of the entire story.  Writing Treatments That Sell 2nd edition by Ken Atchity &  Chi Li Wong is an excellent book to refer to when writing your treatment.

The architecture:  This is the structure of your story.  The beginning, middle and end applies to all forms of storytelling.  You can learn how to put this together by taking classes, reading books, reading scripts and researching along with practice writing.

With your treatment, work out a Master Scene List or Outline as they are called.  These are a scene by scene description of your entire story.  One paragraph a scene.

The voice:  Finally, the script.  There are many different types of software on the market today with Movie Magic Screenwriter and Final Draft being the top two.  If you do not have the finances to purchase scriptwriting software, using Microsoft Word or a similar word processing program will do just as well provided you follow the industry's formatting guidelines. 

Using your Master Scene List or Outline, begin to write your story.  David Trottier's The Screenwriter's Bible  is a very helpful book when you are writing your script.  This is  reference to formatting and other areas when writing the script.

----------------------------------

1.  The idea

2.  Treatment, 1-2 page Synopsis, log line

3.  Master Scene List

4.  Script

5.  Treatment and synopsis (rewrite the treatment and work on a short synopsis to reflect the script provided the script is the final draft ready to send out for review and/or open market to sell.)

6.  You will find a system that works best for you though you need the above steps

Questions:   JadeKingProd@aol.com