5-TIPS For Writing a Great Screenplay!

5-TIPS For Writing a Great Screenplay

Becoming a writer can be the most rewarding thing that one can accomplish in his lifetime. But to accomplish this you need to write some exceptional stories.

Writing is an art and like any other art form, some aspects of it can be learned and some can’t. In this article, we will discuss the aspects that can be learned for writing the screenplay.

These techniques can help you in turning a story into a screenplay. The narration of a screenplay is different than a story. The screenplay represents a story that can be filmed with a camera. Let’s discuss the 5 Tips to write a great screenplay for the film.

1. Purpose & Impediment

Before you doing anything even before opening the laptop word file you must have a purpose and impediment. If you have got these two elements in your story. It has all the potential to become a superhit.

But what do we mean by the Purpose & Impediment? It simply means that somebody has a purpose. Somebody wants something very badly but there is a bigger Impediment in achieving the purpose.

You need to unfold your story in such a way that these two elements of purpose and impediment remain the two-wheel of your story. The bigger the obstacle the bigger it will make your characters.

Somebody wants money very badly but something is stopping him to get this money. Somebody wants a girl but somebody is in the way to stop him. That’s a good start for writing a screenplay. That is the way forward to generate the idea that will lead to a great story and screenplay.

2. Use BUT – EXCEPT- WHAT- WHY & WHERE 

One may have an idea but not every idea can turn into a story unless we have some basic questioning related to the idea. You may have a story idea about a bank clerk and banking. But this is not a story, why? Because you haven’t asked the basic question of why, except what and where. Once you learn using this you will get a start which will lead to another start and by weaving these starts you build a beginning.

For example, you want to tell a story of a Banking Clerk who is an honest employe and work hard for the maintaining his family but one day somebody leaves a suitcase in his cabin and when he opens it he founds unclaimed money he could have deposited this to bank manager but then he thinks that it can be used for his son tuition fee of medical college. Now that’s a good storyline. So do not hesitate to use the words like but -except, what, and where to design a story.

3. Research for the story 

Research is an important part of the story and screenplay writing. If you writing something which you are not familiar with you may have to start with scratch. For example, if you are writing a story about cybercrime but you don’t know anything about computers then you need to start your research for knowing the computers first.

But in a case, you are writing a biopic then you may be looking for specific things. you might want to meet with the people who lived with him. who knew your character inside out. This will help you to understand the character and tell a story that has something new to tell beyond what people already know about the character.

4. Participation of the Audience 

The audience must participate in your story. You must engage them in your story. You must compel them to wave the story before you present the story you want to tell and you must try harder and harder to show that they were wrong all the time about what going to happen next.

For that, you must leave some clue and throw some ideas for the audience and let them travel with you. A story designed and presented in such a manner where the audience participates with the story you have already won their hearts.

Follow the basic rules 

If you think, that art has no rules well think again that why so many people fail at writing screenplay that sells. It is a wrong perception formed by many new filmmakers and today you will learn that rules will help you build great screenplays. Rules what makes art beautiful so let’s follow the basic rules of screenplay writing.

Read Screenplays 

All the great artists have studied others’ work and by observing their work they incorporated these teachings in their craft and produce great work. For example. A. R. Rahman the genius musician worked with illyaraja in his childhood days. He started earlier and learned the craft by applying rules and presented a new experience for his audience. So as a writer you must read screenplays. Obtain the screenplay copies of the famous films that you like and read the screenplay along with the movie and then you will come to know what exactly a screenplay means to a film. 

Film screenplay can be divided into Act One, Act Two and Act Three. or plot point one, plot point two, or plot point three. Following this structure will help you to maintain the frame of your screenplay. Let’s understand how these acts can help us in writing the screenplay 

Act one (Plot Point 1) 

Act one or plot point means Introduction to the problem. The obstacle is stopping the character which he wants at any cost. This plot point will help the story spread to the different areas and must be introduced in the first part of the film as early as possible.    

Act Two (Plot point two ) 

Act two means that the protagonist understands the problem but still, he is not finding much reason to fight for it. He is fighting the situation by delaying it or looking for alternative ways to deal with the problem. Meanwhile, the problem keeps growing to a limit that the protagonist will have to make a decision soon to avoid any unwanted situation. This must be introduced in the middle part of the story   

Act three (Plot point three )

Act three means when finally the protagonist raises beyond the doubts and ready to fight with the problem. Here comes the time when the protagonist will face a direct encounter with the problem. This must be introduced in the final segment of the story 

Climax (The finale ) 

 Finally, the protagonist will fight and he may either lose or win depending upon the situation or your story demand. How big is the climax will depend upon how big was the problem. So again you reach point number one. So working on ACT one is most important.