Screenwriting 101: Meg LeFauve

“I just open a document and start brain dumping anything I can think of, all my questions, all my inspiration, all my ideas. Then I go back and read over it and cull it, and add more questions, more ideas. Eventually, I hopefully find a core. At least I have the pulse of the character we’re going to, ‘She’s going to start here, and she’s going to end here. This is the main relationship. This is the world and some of its rules — as she sees it.’ So then, I hopefully know, or have some ideas about, the basic engine parts of a story — the pieces that I need to have in act one to propel act two, and emotionally what I think it’s about.

The next step is I open a new document and do what I call a barf draft. I just puke it all out. I don’t stop. I don’t worry if it’s right or wrong. I don’t worry if, ‘Oh, god, I just had a new character walk in.’ Great, if they just walked in. I just let it come out.

This raw draft is the clay that I’ve pulled up from the riverbed. Now, OK, given all of this, what actually is the story, because suddenly a new character showed up, and the story just completely pivoted over to this direction. That’s much better. Let’s do that story. That’s a completely different plot, but I had to go through the first raw draft to get to that plot.”

— Meg LeFauve

From Go Into The Story interview, April 2020

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