Ahhh! Need help with a BIG musical!!

crzyns

crzyns

Active member
Okay, I've been workin on this musical for many months now, and unfortunatly, I have just got that ANNOYING "disease"- writer's block!! Nooooo.

Anyway, as it is a musical, I have to write song lyrics. In this musical, I have love songs, general songs (many duets), and a rap. I am having a tremendous amount of trouble with these songs, especially the rap... I just can't seem to get them sounding right (with rhyming, syllables etc.)

Can anyone suggest any templates (on the web or otherwise) or give me any suggestions?

Thank you!!!
 
Actually I've been wondering myself how these things are done. How do you format a screenplay for a musical? Oftentimes the song lyrics will really replace dialogue, so do you put the actual song right in the script?
 
gi-jones said:
Actually I've been wondering myself how these things are done. How do you format a screenplay for a musical? Oftentimes the song lyrics will really replace dialogue, so do you put the actual song right in the script?
Click to expand...

gi-jones has a good point there... at the moment I have script and lyrics separate, so I'll need to merge them at sometime.
 
Thanks troppercopper. However that thing does definately not follow any screenwriting formatting, that I've seen. I don't know the theater-format, but how would one go about it for a film?
 
It might be worth your while looking for an on-screen musical script to make sure of formatting - see if you can get the screenplay for the new Mama Mia film or something?
 
Does anyone know where you can find the Mama Mia! film screenplay? I can't find it. Any URLs???
 
Most (if not all) theatre musical scripts will have song lyrics CAPITALIZED and dialogue normally formatted to easily distinguish between the two, especially in cases where there's dialogue intercutting in the middle of a song. Song will aslo generally be numbered. Character names for who's singing will generally be centred about the lyrics and for dialogue will be written reading left to right...
(an extremely rough example) :

2. THE SPEED TEST
GRAYDON
MY EYES ARE FULLY OPEN TO MY
AWFUL SITUATION SO IM WRITING
YOU A LETTER TO DEMAND AN
EXPLANATION
​

MILLIE: (Moving downstage L) A little slow, perhaps...?
GRAYDON: Ahh...

(The music gets faster)

GRAYDON
WHEN THE FLOOR WAX THAT WE
BOUGHT FROM YOU ARRIVED HERE

etc....​
 
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