Screenplay Prep

With most posts about the writing of my screenplay, I'll be forced to be deliberately vague. I won't be sharing many details about the characters and plot, as that would be letting the cat out of the bag too soon. The most I can say right now is that, with the exception of a few brief moments, the story involves just two characters in a single location.

I have had this idea floating around in my head for years and am very happy I made myself this goal, as it has finally gotten me to put my ideas down on paper. My first step was to write down ideas for scenes, sequences, character arcs, or anything else I could think of about the story. This really got my creative juices flowing, and I came up with some new ideas that I think will really help the story breathe. The greatest challenge with this screenplay will be keeping the story moving at a decent pace and maintaining audience interest despite only having two characters. One new idea I came up with involves one of the characters making an effort to discover something that, in my original vision for the story, had just been told to them. This will help me make the character more proactive and will keep the story from falling into a lull.

My next step was to map out the story itself in very broad strokes. This involved writing a few short sentences describing how the movie begins, what gets the primary plot rolling and so on, up until the final image the audience sees before the fade to black. This will be a helpful "cheat sheet" to refer to when making my board of index cards.

The third and final step, making the actual index card board, I will detail in a future post. My next post, however, will deal with the next three movies I saw in theatres: "Inside Llewyn Davis", "Philomena", and "Her". One of them I found incredibly boring, one I enjoyed with a few reservations, and one I absolutely loved.