1. Most of writing a screenplay (about 65%) is done in planning and prewriting.
2. Writing a screenplay is a succession of breakdowns: moving from the general to the specific.
3. Don't write a script for a movie you yourself wouldn't go see.
4.
Remember the goal of every writer is to get an "emotional" response
from your audience. Scripts that are too bland or boring or cliche, only
anger an audience (and don't usually get made in the first place).
Writers think in different ways:
1. Inductively: from specific to the universal
2. Deductively: from the universal to the specific
3. Logically: How one thing causes another thing to happen
4. Non-logically: Absurdity or mere coincidence
5. Creatively: discovering hidden connections or relationships between two unrelated things (i.e. metaphorically)
It's
okay to think in any of these ways. No one way is the right way. You,
of course, can also combine these ways of thinking too.
Get ideas from:
1. Experience (personal or from those around you)
2. What you overhear (conversation)
3. News/Advertising
4. Photographs, paintings, visual art
5. Mind-mapping on a specific subject
6. Speculative brainstorming: asking: What if...?
7. Dreams and/or visualization
8. Free association
9. Adaptation (novels, short stories, poems, memoirs, etc.)
10. Intertexuality (stealing similar ideas from other sources)
After coming up with an idea, test its strength by asking:
1. Who, what, where, when, how, why?
2. Does it have "legs" - is it dramatic and interesting?
3. What's at stake for your character/protagonist?
4. Is the situation understandable or filmable?
5. Is the story too personal or vague?
Always
play the devil's advocate when considering the validity of your
writing/story/characters/plot, etc. What weaknesses are in your script?
Try to fix them after writing a first draft or during the first draft, if you can.
