30 Tips To Get You Writing Your Screenplay

For you aspiring screenwriters, here is some great advice from the blog Kid in the Front Row on how to get started!

1. Set a timer on your phone. Let's say an hour. Sit and don't do anything for that hour. Don't look at your phone again, don't turn on the TV. Don't tweet. It's just you and the chair. Don't write down ideas that come to you, don't do anything. Sit, think, dream. But no action.

As creative people we often snap into action the second we feel we have a seed of an idea. So often, it's a false alarm, a restless brain. Take the time to sit with your ideas. If you want to write them down, tough. Not during this hour.

2. Write a feature film in less than an hour, by outlining it scene by scene as it comes into your brain. Like this:

MARK is at the office, bored and depressed.

SALLY is working a double shift at the cake shop. She hates it.

MARK walks into the CAKE shop. He's depressed. SALLY tells him to buy a cake. He does so.

MARK walks out of the store, wishing he'd got her number.

The cake shop EXPLODES.

MARK sprints inside, he hunts for SALLY in between the flames.

The example above is me being silly -- that wouldn't make a good film at all. But a good shortcut with writing is just to outline ideas as they come to you. To throw caution to the wind. Don't write a masterpiece, just find the next sentence.

Before you know it, you've outlined a whole movie. If it sucks, who cares? You've lost nothing but an hour or two. If it's good? Go back to it and build from it.

3. Write a bad script. Even if your ideas are AWFUL, or NON-EXISTENT, write it anyway. You'll learn from it. Some people spend five years writing no scripts because their ideas aren't good enough. But in fact, if you wrote 15 bad scripts in that time, you'd learn so much about yourself and your writing.

4. Quit. Go do something else. Become a shepherd, get into a relationship with a trout. If you quit for good, then it probably wasn't for you -- but if you come back to it some day, then maybe the break is exactly what you needed. Some people write their masterpieces in their 70's. Some people have great talent, but have nothing to say. Rather than sitting in your room trying to force a script out, go volunteer in Africa. Go visit a friend in France. Anything is better than sitting around not writing.

5. Be around people who make you laugh.

6. Do things that make you uncomfortable. Just past your comfort zone is where you have the interesting experiences, and meet people that you didn't think you'd ever come across.

7. When a friend asks you to do something that you don't want to do --- instead of making the excuse that you're tired, or have work in the morning, say 'yes' to the offer and go and do the thing you don't want to do.

8. Work on the script that's been circling around your brain since you were 13. You know the one; the script you've been destined to write because it's so personal yet have always stayed away from because you don't have enough clarity. Attack it like you know exactly what to write. And guess what, you do know how to write it, you're just a scaredy cat. That's right.

9. Realise your inner-critic has absolutely no jurisdiction over your life. What has it ever done? All it does is shout at you from some self-righteous position within your own brain. Tell it to go for a long walk. You can actually train yourself to listen to your inner-critic. You'll actually hear that voice in you that says, "you suck, you're a fraud, you have no talent", or maybe it's worse, maybe it says, "your parents were right, you're a waster, and your girlfriends that dumped you had the right idea too....".

Stop and think for a minute. With that voice in your head, you'll never get any work done.

You have to understand that the inner-critic is there to save you from perceived threats, from embarrassing yourself. But when you're 89 and dead, you won't regret being embarrassed. But you will regret not writing a script because some bitch on Facebook thought you had no talent, and you'll regret not sending your script to a producer just because an inner voice said you're talentless.

Get your act together and stop listening to that bullshit. It's nonsense.

Here are the rest of the 30 tips.

- Lena