If you want not only to watch movies and TV series, but also to put your hand to their creation, try yourself as a scriptwriter. Here are eight steps that will help you learn this profession.
Step 1: Disassemble the reasons
Why did you decide to become a screenwriter? The answer can’t lie on the plane “because I want to become rich and famous”. There will be both wealth and fame, but only if they are not the reason for choosing a profession.
You will achieve success, leave a legacy, your activity will benefit people only if you really love what you want to do, if you are willing to give more than take.
Step 2: Answer the question honestly if this is your calling.
How do you know if you can talk about calling or not? A calling is when the profession calls you, leaves invisible signs everywhere and guides you through life.
It makes you love stories (listen, retell, collect, search, read, and look).
It makes you like to listen to people (most of the time you are in “listening” rather than “broadcasting” mode and feel happy about it).
You like to understand the reasons for this or that event and you understand two important things: there are simply no bad people, and there is an explanation for everything, hidden from the eyes of others. But not from the eyes of the writer, author, writer.
Step 3: Start learning
There are two ways to do this: either get into a specialized school or start studying yourself. In the first case, it is important to choose a master who does not contradict your picture of the world.
Look for the person you want to listen to, choose a master intuitively.
If, for some reason, formal study is not for you, start learning by yourself. What you will need here: self-discipline (regularity of training), recommendations (consistency in the choice of material) and meaningful practice, that is, a person who is already something of himself. He will be able to evaluate your first works and give practical advice that is not mentioned in books.
Step 4: Write a lot
At the very beginning of the way you need to understand the important thing: do not wait for inspiration to write. You need the exact same daily training as Michael Phelps, who is preparing to swim four kilometers and take a new world record.
When we learn (when we work too), we just have to do the exercises, do the work. And your exercises are inventing stories and writing them. You take the theme “An unexpected turn” and think up 50 exercises. For example, take the usual situations that happened to you during the day and flip them over so that it was true, interesting, unexpected. Next, you choose the next topic and again invent a complex for practicing this element. Only practice will teach you to be a scriptwriter.
Step 5: Define your author’s territory
When you’ve worked out the elements and more or less learned to stick to the water of scripting skills, it’s important to understand what you can talk about.
To be honest, there can be no competition as such in creative professions. Because each person is unique. He has a unique point of view, a unique voice, a way of sensual perception of the world and a way of writing. Therefore, it is important for you to understand what topics you can make your own skate, for the study of what you can spend the whole day. For example, for some it is a theme of relations with your mother, for some it is a theme of death of a loved one, and for some it is “robot and man”. Look for something that excites your imagination and fills it with life.
Step 6: Make a statement about yourself
When you have accurately outlined your author’s universe, you should declare that you like to write on such topics. And start participating in competitions and pitches (you can find them on the Internet), send out your requests for stories to film companies, meet the directors and offer them work on your or their ideas.
If you’re just getting started, it’s a good idea to agree to all the proposals, even those you won’t be paid for.
Your job is to build your portfolio, because it’s the only one that gives you the right to enter the big market.
The more you know about your profession at both the practical and theoretical levels, the faster you’ll become a master.
“The writer is the one who stays. It is scary, difficult, humiliating, and unbearable for everyone. It is important to stay, it is important to win. After all, if you want to know everything about your hero, put him in difficult circumstances. It is the same with a person. I hope that you will stay. Because you are the winner.