Wednesday 8 April 2009

I'm a terrible blogger

But in the time I've not blogged I've written a feature length screenplay. *applause*

Well not quite, I'm 5 pages away from the FADE TO BLACK



It's been a quick write, I wrote 25 pages in two days which is probably the quickest I've written on anything.

Inspiration

On one of my pessimistic screenwriter days I thought to myself "This is actually what I want to do, what happens if I don't make it" - This instantly created a character, based on me, about ten years older who hasn't 'made it'. I knew it had dramatic elements but also had a lot of room for comedy.

How the writing partnership worked

I don't really like the idea of writing with someone else and I hadn't so it was a new experience but I've found it really encouraging and I suppose it's a step to becoming a better screenwriter.

Taking criticism, brainstorming, deciding if scenes work or not and the general back and forth of the process is an eye opener. I think writers arrogantly want to do it all them self and it's not always the best way. With this I was stuck on page 40 and had hit a wall, there I brought in Paul and the next 20 or so pages seemed to flow pretty well.


I might post an excerpt from the script in the next few days, don't hold your breathe though, look at the title of this blog :S

HS

2 comments:

Sofluid said...

I also had the same view before I met my writing partner, Neil. It takes strength not to try and "take over" and do it all yourself, and it takes triple strength to sit back and watch your work being torn apart critically. You have to learn to be accepting of new ideas and willing to incorporate them. But it's incredibly satisfying when a dead-end opens up into a whole maze of avenues purely from having a new creative mind looking at your work with fresh eyes.

Please do post an excerpt, I'd love to see your style.

One thing though... you hint that your feature is 60 pages or so in length... Surely that's not long enough for a feature? A TV feature, yes, but if it's a film you're writing it needs to be around the 90-120 page mark.

Good luck!

Harry said...

Hey Sofluid, sorry I didn't make myself clear, our feature will be about 75-80 pages when we finished which is still a bit on the short side but it is a comedy and a script we would like to shoot as a no budget so I think it's just about right.

There are a lot of films I watch that get entered into SXSW and Raindance etc that are barely 70 mins.

An excerpt will be posted this week, just trying to find the right one. If you haven't already please become a follower of this blog :)