Writing the First Draft

4 tips on how to get from FADE IN to FADE OUT in your feature length screenplay.

I’m just now wrapping up my latest Prep: From Concept to Outline online workshop. As I always do in our last teleconference, I provide 4 tips on how the writers can take their outline and successfully pound out a first draft of their feature length screenplay. I thought I’d share those tips here.

• Embrace the spirit of “It’s not going to be perfect”. Initially, that may feel debilitating. You mean I put all this time and effort into breaking story to put together this comprehensive scene by scene outline, and you’re telling me when I finally get done with my first draft, I won’t be done? Yes, that’s precisely what I’m telling you. But if you can manage to shift your perspective just a couple of clicks, here’s where you can end up: Wait-a-minute. If there’s no way my first draft is gonna be perfect, that means the pressure’s off! Yep! With a first draft, it’s not about getting it right, it’s about getting it done. So embrace the spirit of imperfection. Have fun with your writing. Feel free to play around with narrative voice, when you enter and exit scenes, visual and psychological writing. ‘Coz you know what? Your first draft just ain’t gonna be perfect.
• Use a script diary. The last thing you do before you type FADE IN is create a script diary. That’s where you start every writing session. Type the date and time of day, then you write something like, Okay, I’m starting this new script. Kinda nervous about it, but excited, too. Use the script diary as a way of seguing from the Real World into the Story World. It also helps you get your creativity loosened up as you tap away, describing the upcoming scene you’re about to write. And there’s this: Whenever you hit a bad spot in the scripting process — a scene doesn’t work, the characters are flat, the dialogue is limp — you can stop you writing and hop over to the script diary. Then vent your frustrations like a 13 year-old. OMG! I hate this story SO MUCH!!! The characters are being real POOPS ‘coz they’re not doing what my outline SAYS they should do!!! Help!!! What I’ve discovered is by confessing my anxieties and concerns in the script diary, somehow the solutions to the writing problems emerge. Sometimes right there in the diary, so I start brainstorming and the words just flow. Other times later in the day or even the next day, out for a run, in the shower, folding laundry… boop! There’s the solution! Script diary. Hugely useful tool.
• Don’t think… feel. This I got from the late, great Ray Bradbury. When you sit down to write a scene, don’t think about it so much as feel your way into and through it. Don’t consult your outline before writing the scene. If it’s important, you’ll remember it. Instead, get into a kind of meditative state. Take some deep breaths. Be here now. Close your eyes. Get into the head space of your characters. What are they feeling right now? Where are they on their emotional journey? What is the mood of the scene? Take one final last deep breath, exhale, and let your fingers fly. As the great screenwriting guru Obi-Wan Kenobi:

• Get the damn thing done! I don’t believe in screenwriting rules. Conventions and expectations, yes. Not rules. But there is one I lay down on the writers who work with me in my classes and it’s about the first draft: Get the damn thing done! When you commit to FADE IN, you are also committing to FADE OUT. No matter if you think what you’re writing is total shite, keep writing. First off, there is almost nothing as soul-sucking awful as putting in all that effort, reaching the middle of the script, then petering out. Another creative endeavor crashes and burns. On the other hand, when you reach FADE OUT on — REMEMBER — your imperfect script, that is something you not only can celebrate, it’s a psychological barrier you trample to pieces. You don’t want to write this script. You have written this script. That is a huge difference. Moreover, there are things about the story you cannot possibly know unless you get to the end. You will understand your characters so much more. The story’s themes will become clearer to you. Oh, and that cool bit of business on page 94 which came up out of nowhere? You can make a note to go back to page 19 to set it up for a later payoff. Get the damn thing done! Get the damn thing done! GET THE DAMN THING DONE!

There are other pieces of advice I have like… Create a calendar with weekly page due dates on Sunday… Don’t watch any movies in the genre you’re writing or else you may start to second guess your own creative instincts… Don’t finish that scene… but the four biggies are:

• Embrace the spirit of “It’s not going to be perfect”.
• Use a script diary.
• Don’t think… feel.
• Get the damn thing done!

Equipped with this arsenal of advice, you’re ready to take on the challenge of getting from FADE IN to FADE OUT. Good luck and…

ONWARD!