fade in professional screenwriting software cracking 101

If you know your very important place in the process, the producer will keep you around. You also shouldn’t include camera angles or camera directions because you are not directing the film-the director is. Your job is to tell the story visually, not to tell actors to blink, smile, breath, shrug, roll their eyes or fold their arms. Trust me, great actors and directors make your scene better and neither like to be told what to do by the screenwriter. Take a lighter touch and don’t micromanage every scene with heavy description for fear the reader won’t understand what you are trying to do. A professional will read your script and every format issue or overwritten paragraph will leap off the page and be a major distraction. Your script will live or die by a thousand issues and it’s vital that you get past a first great read.

You immediately give yourself away as an amateur or aspirant if your script is riddled with format issues, typos or structure problems. When I consulton a screenplay, I can tell just from the title page if the screenwriter knows proper format-and so can producers, directors, agents, managers and actors. You have to love the craft of writing, because you are the person up at 2 AM trying to figure out the problems and it’s a long haul to reach any level of success. Some never finish because they hit a wall and it’s difficult.

Or should I say, tried to write a script and got lost on page 45 for the past two years. Most people I come across have taken a crack at writing a screenplay at some time during their stay in Los Angeles or they know someone who is writing a script. It seems now with the proliferation of screenwriting manuals, seminars and gurus that everyone feels entitled to take a crack at a screenplay, just because it would be fun and everyone’s doing it! It’s like a rite of passage when arriving in Los Angeles. The craft is an art form, but also you are creating a blueprint for a movie and every blueprint, even for a house, has industry agreed specifics and requirements.

Mastering format shows that you know what you are doing and you’ve actually taken the time to study and learn the craft of screenwriting. Any professional in the film business will be able to recognize if you’re an amateur by your title page or page one of your screenplay-just by the way it’s presented. It’s what separates the professional screenwriter from the amateur. Format? Pffft, hello is this on? Screenplay format? It’s extremely important.

Fade in professional screenwriting software cracking 101