Screenplays by Craig Batty

Craig Batty. Screenplays: How to write and Sell Them. Harpenden, Herts, U.K., 2012.

Screenwriting is creating writing, It is written in an active mode in the present tense.

Final Draft has a screenplay outline. A screenplay includes a slugline, or screen heading, indicating where a scene is set. The shows INT. for an interior setting and EXT. for an exterior setting. The screenplay continues with scene actions, or scene direction, character names, character dialogue, with parentheses underneath the character name to indicate how dialogue should be stated if not obvious for the dialogue, and scene transactions for specific effects.

Short films often present one emotion or one events with focus and often are experimental. Feature films explore more emotions and themes while remaining tightly focused, and usually are traditional yet can be experimental. TV series analyze more characters in more depth.

To find ideas, look around. A writer should consider what the write wishes to tell. There are no rules in developing ideas. One often analyzes possibilities and considers divergent ad convergent thinking. Process and process ideas. Tell and retell ideas. Consider unexpected situations. Determine important elements, themes, and capture imagination, style, and tone that will capture an audience.

Screenwriters often write a scene by scene step outline. They may write a treatment of a fully determined story.

“Casting the world” is when the author creates the characters, develops a protagonist, creates the antagonist, and develops the other characters and their relationships to the world and to each other.

“Structuring the world” is when the author creates the plot, emotions, arc, pace, and actions.

“Viewing the world” is creating the dialogue and determining how the words affect attitudes, perspectives, and topics.

“Theming the world” considers genre and how themes affect characters and how they communicates these themes.

Compelling screenplays are often unique or specific, vivid in detail, and authentic in internal logic.

Hone characters until they find their true voices.

The “defining problem” is what makes characters react that creates the story. “Power questions” consider characters and their desires, needs, dreams, rears, strengths, weaknesses, and problems.

“Backstory questions” give more details after characters.

Consider how characters react to each other, how others react to them, what their backstories are, what they wear and would not wear, how they compose themselves in situations, what their homes are like, what vehicles they drive, where they spend their earnings, their speech patterns, how they speak to those of higher social status, how they speak to people younger and less experienced, their vocabularies, culture, politics, religion, and what they don’t talk about.

Consider the cast design. Who is in conflict and who is friends with the protagonist, who likes and dislikes who, how are characters connected, what make them distinctive, ad what binds them?

The psychological work of Carl Jung and Rollo May examines character functions, how all characters reflect the protagonist, and the need of the protagonist to integrate the qualities of others to achieve goals.

Minor characters often illuminate either major characters and mirror the theme. They often create innovation.

Story structure is important and integral

A journey is both physical and emotional.

The three act structure is:
Act 1: Beginning / Setup / Establishment, including the inciting incident; which is about one fourth the screenplay.
Act 2. Middle / Confrontation / Complications; which is about one half the screenplay.
Act 3. End ‘/ Resolution / Re-establishment; which is about one-fourth the screenplay.

The inciting incident usually occurs in the first 10 to 15 pages.

The Tentpoles of a screenplay are Status Quo, Inciting Incident / Catalyst, Turning Point, End of Act 1, Act 2. Midpoint. End of Act 2, Turning Point, Hardest Choice, Climax  / Final Battle, Resolution, and End.

Sequences in screenplays are establish the story, the inciting incident occurs, creating the plot goal, the the protagonist confronts the problem leading to the end of Act 1, the protagonist acts but the problem remains the protagonist tries harder but faces further obstacles as they stakes increase leading to a mid-point that often creates a new direction, the protagonist adjusts to the mid-point with a new plan, the new plan fails which ends Act 2 and shows the low point where all seems lost, the biggest battle involving the hardest choices creates the climax, often with a false resolution or unexpected twist, and the final resolution of action and emotion.

Alternate structure uses multiple protagonists and parallel stories.

Non-linera immersive storytelling may lack a main character lack a main plot, and have no cause and effect. The audiences becomes participant instead of observers.

Screenwriters must write visually. A screenwriter should think visually. Write in visual grammar including visual actions that give meanings to characters.

Consider setting locaitons that are appropriate to and could create some spice to a story.

A valued object is one that reflects the theme, is seen at least three times, charts a character’s physical and/or emotional growth and often creates humor.

A motif is a recurring image.

A screenwriter exploits the elements of the screenplay’s genre.

Theme is a statement of perspective or judgement.

The Central Dramatic Question drives the plot. The Central Thematic Question drives the emotion.

A scene presents actors and emotions, develops plot and characters, and is a unit of exchange where things occur.

A screenwriter should determine what drives a scene The scene must continue the plot. A scene allows the audience to live the story.

Scenes should often start as late and end as early as possible.

A screenwriter should consider narrative economy, flow, character, and justification when writing a sequence.

A screenwriter should consider focused, tight, and meaningful conversation. Often, write as little as possible to give the desired meaning. Avoid redundant words like “ well, so, ummm, but, yes, no, etc. Use expressive words like Really, It’ can’t be, Oh my God, Yes please, S/he said what, and This can’t be happening.

The Creative Screenwriter by Zara Waldeback and Craig Batty

Zara Waldeback and Craig Batty. The Creative Screenwriter: Exercises to Expand Your Craft. London: Meuthuen Drama, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2012.

This book encourages screenwriters to be dutiful in upgrading their abilities. Increased expertise provides insights on overcoming difficulties. Creative forces should be sharpened to improve writings. Stories should be analyzed and weaknesses should be improved upon.

The authors observe that creativity involves a freedom of ideas within limits.  They recommend writing down all kinds of ideas and then sharpening the best ideas.  A writer should consider experiences that were particularly engaging as subject ideas. Writers should tell stories and consider what they hear.

Writers block can be overcome by deliberately writing badly. In fact, the goal then is to write as badly as possible Writing things we shouldn’t often leads to something creative.

Screenwriters should guard against choosing stories that are so common that they wont excite an audience. They should stay attuned to new ideas that may occur or  become known in one’s surroundings. Consider how introducing other characters may change a story and the relations between characters. Switch roles of characters and consider those possible consequences. Discover what works best.

A story requires development. Find a “Creative Dramatic Question” that creates desires for characters and develop a dramatic story. Analyze the story for problems. Resolve the problems. See that the story will hold an audience’s interest. Most screenplays have 30 or more beat points. There must be conflict. The story must progress logically an enthusiastically. Reconsider the story for new ways that make them more dramatic. The audience should appreciate the story, its characters, and how the story progresses.

Characters should fit well into the story. There should be a clear protagonist.  The characters require emotions and should grow emotionally during the story. The protagonist needs some reason to react to a story.

Characters must react to other characters. There must be conflict with an appropriate antagonist.  The antagonist must create obstacles to a protagonist’s goals. A catalyst creates a new situation that changes the principal character. This alters characters and their relations. Screenplays often show situations as viewed differently by different characters. This affects how they interact with others as situations alter. Sometimes the presence of an unseen character offers insights.

The protagonist requires a character arc derived from a serious fo events that creates an emotional realization. This realization results from the inciting incident. All characters are changes by these events. Those changes result from growing problems, increasing drama, and severe challenges that bring about rewarding resolutions of all problems.

Screenwriters should examine alternatives in the structures of screenplays. There can be more than one protagonist or several stories.  Reexamine the beginning and consider if it starts at the best time or place. Examine if the Central Dramatic Question works. See if audiences get the best initial impressions of characters.  Make characters more sympathetic by placing the in greater trials. Be certain important information is provided.

Opening with a voiceover often results in an audience immediately bonding with the narrator. This can be a tricky but useful device if the narration either bonds the audience to a central there or if the narration contains information that rewards the audience later.  The story must end in a manner with which the audience considers apparent and with which the audience identifies. Twists to endings can work but twists that do not seem to follow the previous actions can fail.

Some scripts take familiar themes of stores and reset them in new locations with different characters.

Dialogue has to be appropriate for a character at that time.. They should be reveal inner thoughts. The screenplay should be appropriate for its genre. Genres can be mixed but may face confusion that loses the audience. Genre can create a mood.

Rewritings should refine the screenplay. Check that each scene fills a need. Conflict and action should build with increasing complications.

Movies, being visual, require visual depictions. Screenplays show characters doing things. Audiences prefer seeing things shown to them rather than having dialogue describing it.

Rewrite to sharpen dialogue. Create dialogue that reveals emotions and information without directly stating it. Often a silent reaciotn of some sort can be very informative.

Consider how to best present subtext in dialogue.

A screenwriter should recognize and develop one’s own voice. This voice can change over time, yet it, or its distinguishing difference, can find new appeal.