Step Outline your screenplay.
A step outline is essentially a step by step breakdown of your story. By planning your story structure in advance you will save yourself a whole lot of time in the "rewriting" stage of your project because no matter how good you are at screenwriting, all writers have to learn to love rewriting.
Movie Outline uses "Steps" instead of "Scenes" which may confuse some screenwriters who are used to using... Show more
Step Outline your screenplay.
A step outline is essentially a step by step breakdown of your story. By planning your story structure in advance you will save yourself a whole lot of time in the "rewriting" stage of your project because no matter how good you are at screenwriting, all writers have to learn to love rewriting.
Movie Outline uses "Steps" instead of "Scenes" which may confuse some screenwriters who are used to using scenes in relation to film timing and screenplay layout, but the difference is actually quite simple to understand.
A "Step" in Movie Outline really means an "Event" in the progression of your story, and this means that each step can consist of more than one "Scene". A Montage sequence is one good example or:
Joe leaves his apartment, gets in his car, drives to the bank.
Although in a screenplay this totals three scenes, in a step-outline it is only one step since the nature of creating a step-outline dictates that you focus on the main story event and do not get into too much detail. Unless something big happens to Joe while he is getting into his car, the scene can be described within the overall event. What then happens when Joe enters the bank is another step.. and so on.
Another example could be a car chase. In a screenplay, each location that the cars involved in the chase pass through is technically a scene, but since we're dealing with the same story event, the entire chase and collection of scenes is referred to as a step.
Or supposed your screenplay has your Hero bravely dashing into a burning building to save a child while other fire-fighters frantically do their best to put out the blaze. Technically, each room your Hero searches in constitutes a scene, and every time we cut back to the other fire-fighters, they are separate scenes too, but when planning your story, it is much easier to think of this as one single event and as such, a single step.
1. Craft Your Logline
A logline is a one-sentence summary of your story, and they’re primarily used as a marketing tool. When a studio executive asks you to give him your best pitch, your logline is the first thing you’ll mention.
Loglines also function as a helpful guide to focus your writing on the most important aspects of your story. In other words, loglines help your story stay on track.
Loglines generally contain three elements:
A protagonist
An antagonist
A goal
2. Write a Treatment: Your First Sketch
Also primarily a marketing document, treatments give executives an idea of whether the story is worth their money. However, like the logline, it also serves as a helpful tool for the writer, a kind of first sketch of the story.
a treatment is like a first sketch of a film. Treatments are generally two to five page summaries that break the story into three acts. Here are the three main elements of a treatment:
Title of the Film
Logline
Synopsis
Treatments may include snippets of dialogue and description, but the main focus is on synopsizing the story.
3. Structure Your Outline
In this step, you mine into the structure of the story. As Wilder said, the most important element a screenplay is, “STRUCTURE! STRUCTURE! STRUCTURE!”
The outline is the first step completely focused on creating. You likely will never show this to anyone but your writing partners. Most feature films have forty scenes, and your job in the outline is to map out the setting and major events of each scene. You might include major dialogue as well.
Just remember your outline is primarily for you. Write as much or as little as you need to
4. Write a Flash Draft
your first real draft, and the same guidelines apply here as to your fiction writing:
Write quickly
Don’t think too hard
Don’t edit
5. Edit
As with books, I recommend doing at least three drafts. After you finish your first draft, read it through once without editing (you can take notes though). In your second draft, you can focus on major structural changes, including filling gaping holes, deepening characters, removing characters who don’t move the story forward, and even rewriting entire scenes from scratch.
In your third draft, you can focus on polishing, specifically, on making your dialogue pop.
Once your script is complete, it’s time to get feedback. Good luck!
*A quick note* If you decide to sell your scripts to movie agencies, they will tear them apart and mend them to their "liking". That is unless you shoot the entire movie yourself.
Thanks for taking the time to read this. Any questions, just ask. And as always, Keep the pen moving!
This is more of a draft that can be used as a base to write a script or a book off of it easily. That's why it is in the Blake Snyder format. If it writes well to the Final Image I will probably look into writing a book out of it. For now this is the idea board and testing area... Show more
This is more of a draft that can be used as a base to write a script or a book off of it easily. That's why it is in the Blake Snyder format. If it writes well to the Final Image I will probably look into writing a book out of it. For now this is the idea board and testing area for the story, as is every draft. :)