Writing first screenplay / listening to music while writing

R

RadioRocket

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Hey everyone, I'm in the process of writing/directing my first short film. I don't have zero experience in writing scripts but this will still be a huge learning curve for me. What are some key things I should remember?
What do you do when you have writers block?
How do you keep your script from being cheesy?
Do you typically write your scripts while listening to music? How do you get your creative juices flowing? etc etc.

Thanks all!

and for anyone who's interesting, here's the link to the short film
imaginarythefilm.tumblr.com
 
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Hmmm I'll take a minute break to answer this.

As I'm just running into this problem in a few scenes myself, try to avoid "talking heads," as it is called. For instance, I just wrote a few scenes where characters are sitting and talking. For two pages each. This is not cinematic. It should be in a novel or something. The key to something strong, cinematically, is to give your characters actions. For instance, I have already re-imagined the first scene into something much more interesting by giving one character the action of creating something, while he's talking to another character about how creation is for God, and not for humans. He is talking about it in a different sense, but even so it's a nice irony that is lost on our protagonist, until a bit later in the script. It's a bit of foreshadowing. As it stands, the scene has interesting dialogue, but it's boring. It's too hard to keep the attention of an audience with characters just talking, especially if it's not animated arguing, or really good looking people, etc.

I think a cheesy script stems from 1) Trying to be too funny / clever, 2) And related to the first point, a sense of unrealism. Basically, that what you are writing is out of touch with reality. That's what makes something cheesy to me.

I do not listen to music. I find music distracting to the creative process. I prefer to avoid distractions. This, right now, is a distraction, but I'm still writing, and that keeps some momentum going. Plus I'm starting to wear low on energy here, lol, so I better get writing fast.

As for writers block, just write. No matter how bad what you are writing is, keep writing anyway. You'll figure out a way around it. I have the worst days when I sit there and stare at the page, finding every excuse not to work.

I would also recommend a really strong outline. The better the outline, the better the writing process, and the more likely you will finish the script.

Hope that helps a little bit, maybe.
 
I rarely listen to music when writing. If I do, it's something instrumental. My every scrap of verbal focus should be on my work.


For me, the thing that makes writing get cheesy (assuming that it isn't just terrible writing to begin with) is when the writer self-consciously tries to make the script sound good, rather than being true to the characters.

Ever seen a bad action movie and heard a character say something that no one ever says except in bad action movies? And generally it's supposed to be kind of a bad-ass or intimidating line? That's when the writer thought "oh boy, let's hit this beat really strong!" instead of kept his mind with his character.
 
Listening to music is common when drawing, painting or doing anything graphical. Silence is condusive to writing. If you know anything about how the brain functions you'll understand why.
 
i do not understand how the brain functions, and write to very loud and aggressive music like Death From Above 1979. but then, i had a friend who told me I write like a painter. i thought she meant b/c i don't write a lot of dialogue, but i think maybe i understand what she meant by that a little better based on what you've said.
 
I listen to Death Metal and hire three people to yell at me while I write. It hurts my self-esteem and eardrums just enough to turn out masterpieces. lol, j/k.

Adam is totally right on the bad dialogue front. I have to say that gave me some funny thoughts, though. Part of me thinks it'd be a riot to make some intentionally bad film like Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus that's tons of fun despite being basically ridiculous. There are so many lines that are so terrible, it's hard not to enjoy.
 
I don't listen to music as I write, I'd find that too distracting, but I do listen while I plan.

I will make up a playlist of songs that best suit the themes/premise and beats of my film, almost like a soundtrack, and put them on my ipod. Then I walk around, backwards and forwards listening to my music as I plan out the scene in my head. I literally have worn out a run in my carpet, as sad as that sounds, because I think better when I'm moving, but I do have the fortune of having a steel trap memory so I don't have to stop to write stuff down until I'm ready.

It has come to the point where my family doesn't ask or wonder what's going on anymore, they know when they see that ipod and me pacing like a maniac that I'm working. The same with complete silence and me starring out of focus off into space - I'm working. Only 20% of my time writing a story is actually spent with fingers to keyboard. That's the beauty of being a writer, it's one of the few occupations where it's okay (if not better) to be a little weird. I think you've got to know yourself and what you need to do in order to get the best writing out of yourself.
 
haha, that's great Yeddi, so true.

Yeah I agree, when I'm planning a scene, and ultimately constructing the story in outline form, most of the time I am doing nothing, and I find it best to walk around as well. There are no distractions from sitting at the computer that way -- Facebook, AIM, browsers, etc. When I'm just walking around the condo a bit, pacing, I seem to come up with a lot of solutions and ideas. I've learned it works the best.

It's weird though, because like you said, the work is a bit weird, it's not what most people think of as "work," but it is work. For instance, last week, I spent all week doing research and coming up with about a 10-page outline, which I never bother to write extremely well. It's very casual. It will not read in a list format or a nice little short story. It'll be more like: "In this scene, our protagonist [often unnamed by this point] meets with his friend. The two of them talk about something like the difficulties he's having with his girlfriend, that he's considering quitting his job, and then his friend tells him he can't do that. I think the reason here is because..." and things like that. It's usually not exact, it's suggestions about 20% of the time, more locked down 80% of the time.

So you work an entire week, and you have nothing to show for it but this flimsy outline, yet in that outline, if you see it the way a writer does, there's this brilliant elegance, like everything is in its place, and you know your work is mostly done. At least, that's how I feel. My work on a rough draft is mostly done before I write FADE IN -- the outline is much harder. And that goes for both feature screenplays I've written and the shorts I've written. The first feature, 3-4 weeks outlining, 8 days writing. Next one was 6 days outlining, wrote it in a single day.

So all of that last week, it may seem like not much work was done, until you see I wrote the entire screenplay in a day, and that is only possible with the work that was done previously. It just appears to anyone else that a large screenplay is more impressive than a flimsy outline. It is not, however. The outline is more important and more difficult.

If I had like 8 features that I loved outlined, I would feel like I had a ton of material.
 
Facebook is the bane of writing productivity. :P

*said as facebook is open in another window - tisk tisk*
 
Thanks everyone, these are all great tips! I just looked at my script and realized that I do have talking heads in it :P I guess different things work for different people. When I meant listening to music I am listening to music that would be played during the scene.
Also, hahaha Zak DFA1979 is a great Canadian band but I don't think I'll be listening to them. Do you intentionally stray away from little dialogue or is it just natural for you to use more actions than words? Also, you mention that you try not to work off a script but rather of a rough outline and give room for actors/actresses for creative improv how does that work?
 
Hmm

Hmm

I don't think there's a right and wrong regarding action / dialogue, except that action should be pithy and not wordy, if you have a lot of it.

My first script was a romantic comedy and it's mostly just dialogue. It's not physical comedy, so there really isn't a lot of action in there. Just enough.

But with the script I just wrote, a lot of sequences are full of action descriptions with a line here and a line there, so it really depends.

It's easy to fall into the talking heads trap. I would almost argue not to worry about it in the first draft or two, because if you come up with good material then you can figure out later an activity for the character or characters.

I turned this one scene like that into something where one character is pulling weeds from his garden and the other is standing, basically speaking casually with him as a friend. There's a whole bit at the end about why he isn't helping pull weeds with him, and it ends up kind of making the scene.
 
I play music whether I'm modeling, animating, drawing, drafting, illustrating or writing, although for writing purposes the music is generally instrumental; lyrics tend to be distracting unless it's music that's *really* tied to the project.

I think 'cheesy' tends to emerge from seen-it-been-there-done-to-death-and-better-than-it-is-here-anyway. And *nothing* multiplies the cheese factor harder and faster than wink-wink references to existing material.
 
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