Here we are, another week, and another chapter in Wesley's Weekly WriteHOW, where I offer advice on ways you can help get yourself started, and get your writing on the page. Our focus here at Indy Mogul is to help you with every stage of the filmmaking process, and the story is central to any film, so if you have a question about writing, or about a story you're working on, head on over to the WriteHow thread in Mogulville, and ask away, now to this weeks focus. 

 

One of the most important things you have to do before you start writing, is to actually plan out your story. (...barring a stream-of-consciousness beat poetry thing, but scripts are rarely such) Without planning, or outlines, many of us can get lost in the story, jump right into it, and sometimes get lost along the way. So how exactly do you PLAN your story? Well there are a lot of ways to do it, but here is a way that works for me... 

 

 

Is it a Hero's journey? Is it a Romantic-Comedy? Is it a Sci-Fi Space Opera epic? Or is it hard to pin down to a genre? Whatever it is, think about what some of your influences are, do some research in the genre, and learn a little about it, figure out exactly what your idea is and try to hammer the plot down in a few paragraphs, explaining to yourself exactly what you're doing can be really helpful when you start thinking about the intricacies of the plot. Once you identify to yourself what exactly your story is about, and what kind of genre might apply to it (or multiple genres), now you move on to the research stage... 

 

 

So lets say you figured out you're doing a Western? Go and rent a few books about the history of the Old West, watch The Seachers and Shane and Rio Bravo and The Dollars Trilogy and some of the other films that pop up on most critics "essential Westerns" lists, maybe read some of the novels that some of the Westerns are based on, look at how some people have mixed up the genre and combined it with other genres (Such as Sci-Fi in the case of Cowboy Bebop, and Firefly), look at how it's mutated over the years, and try to get a feel of what ways the genre has been tread? There is nothing wrong with doing a story that someone else has done before, a conventional story done well is almost always better than an unconventional story done poorly, so don't get caught up with finding out that someone did a very similar idea to something you wanted to do. It's a lot more useful to find out WHY they went a similar direction, and what the appeal is to the similar elements that speaks to people, rather than approaching it from a way to do it different. 

 

You should be doing a story you WANT to do, you shouldn't let other people decide what story you're going to do, and try to be a non-conformist just for the sake of being different. If you WANT to veer off and do something totally original and crazy, let it be on your terms and because that's what YOU WANT out of your story, NOT because you feel like it's your only option. 

 

 

So you know what you want your story to be about, you know what your genre is, you know what other people have done with related stories, so what's the next step? Well lets hammer out your characters. This is the place where everyone's process can be different, some people close their eyes and imagine the characters, someone base the characters on specific actors and write the characters for them, some hammer out archtypes, some base it on people they know personally or their own experiences, but think about your characters, and flesh them out a little. I feel like this is an important step, because remember your characters aren't just sockpuppets for you, they are their own thing, and a Samurai warrior, a Swedish Nuclear Physicist, and a 1920's Wallstreet Mogul are all different people that are going to act as differently from one another as they will from you. So hammer out some basic facts, some of your characters will have families that they love dearly, some won't believe in having a family, some will have radically different religious beliefs, or politics than you, or some might be very much like you, you won't really know until you hammer some basic facts about your character. You DON'T have to get indepth and go Fantasy epic on it and have their entire family tree for 3 generations sketched out, but just have some basic ideas about who they are, and the era they live in. 

 

Once you have your characters hammered out, and you know a little about them, write out an outline, which is you take all the events in your story, and put them in order, you don't have to expand on them, or add details, just basic, "They attack the enemy compound and recover the Crown Jewels", you don't need to have every detail of the segment, just the basic overriding events, outlines generally shouldn't fill up more than a few pages of lined paper at most, so if they start filling up a small pamphlet, you're most likely being too intricate. Remember, no dialogue, no real details, just basic overriding events of each story element, and how that leads to the next part. 

 

 

Something that is really useful to me, but isn't necessarily a REQUIRED step, is to write a treatment. Which is taking your outline, and fleshing it out. You'll say, "Well why not just write the treatment to begin with?", and that's a good question. My answer would most likely be "Well you COULD go ahead and write the treatment to begin with, if you know exactly where you're headed, have all of that already in your head, and you're experience and dedicated to writing longer things without outlining it before hand.", basically it's a good idea to have your story outlined simply, so you don't get distracted and bogged down with the little details, it's a good idea to work with the larger elements and get them out and on paper, before you get caught up with the smaller details. 

 

Basically, going from summary, to outline, to treatment, to your rough draft, for me helps keep the story organized better, and can really be helpful for a beginner writer. Do you have to follow every little step precisely? No, of course not. If you are just starting out though, I feel like working from a small summary, to stretching it out further, and fleshing it out more and more with each iteration is a much easier way to keep your ideas organized and not get bogged down with your story. If you keep it organized and grow more slowly, it'll be far easier to keep your story in order and keep writing, especially if you know where it's headed (and you may indeed known where it's headed, BUT that still leaves it open for you to go into other directions with the story if you feel differently, that's what re-writes are for.)

 

You just have to sit down, and try to dedicate some time each day, and flesh out your idea, generally treatments for a feature length script usually clock in between 5 and 20 pages, sometimes they've been smaller, sometimes longer, but what's important is getting your outline and fleshing it out with actual narrative, and more detail. 

 

 

Beginner writers (and experienced writers too for that matter) generally fall into two camps, the people who research and re-write too little, and come out with shoddy stories, OR the people who use researching and re-writing as an excuse to NOT start, usually because they are afraid of their writing abilities. 

 

You MUST be aware of the pitfalls of either camp, you have to find a place where you're willing to go, "I don't need any more research", and you actually START writing. If you are aware of behavior that is preventing you from writing, then you can better avoid it, beind aware of the problem is the first step to fixing it. 

 

So set a date to stop research, start writing, and then sit down and get in the habit of working on it a little every day. Get it into the habit of it and it gets easier and easier with every day, and then you'll be on the way to much better writing.