I think it’s no secret that I am seriously awed by the guy who does drunkenstepfather.com
It’s totally nsfw and if you just scan it, otolaryngologist it looks like a very dirty celebrity blog and, yeah, that’s part of it, but every now and then the guy will write some prose that slays me.
I’ve written him a couple of very fruity fan-email and he wrote me back and now we have a bit of a pen-pal thing going on which invariably leaads to show-biz.
Looooon boring story turned into short boring story… I sent this to him:
HOW TO WRITE A SCREENPLAY
Writing a screenplay is easy. Seriously.
1 your main character is a person who wants something. by the end of the script, the person has gotten something else he didn’t know he wanted.
2 write down 50 ideas for scenes on the tops separate sheets of paper.
3 put them in the order you think they should be in.
4 in the middle of each sheet, write the location of the scene, the time of day, etc… you know in script format:
INT. OFFICE – DAY
Dean is writing an email to a genius.
5 Add some sort of description of where the person is or what the person is doing that illustrates what kind of person he or the main character is. so…
INT. OFFICE – DAY
Dean is writing an email to a genius. There is a pyramid of diet coke cans and unopened mail on his desk. A dog sleeps next to a dog bowl next to a ripped open 50 pound bag of dog food. The phone rings.
6 Then, add the worst dialogue you can that shows what the conflict in the scene is. The conflict MUST advance your story or advance the character… we must learn something in this scene that we do not know. You may only write two lines of dialogue. later you will go back and fill this in and make it better. but first… you are limited to two lines. thusly:
INT. OFFICE – DAY
Dean is writing an email to a genius. There is a pyramid of diet coke cans and unopened mail on his desk. A dog sleeps next to a dog bowl next to a ripped open 50 pound bag of dog food. The phone rings.DEAN
(yelling over his shoulder)
GOD DAMNIT, WOULD YOU ANSWER THE FUCKING PHONE?DOG
You are so lazy. why don’t you answer the phone. the drunken stepfather guy is from the f.b.i., anyway, you has-been!
Dean faints at the sound of his dog talking.
7 You do those sheets until you have all of your scenes written with two lines of dialogue or two lines of description and they can’t be good. you can’t make them good at this stage. so you may have a car chase:
EXT. FREEWAY – NIGHT – RAIN
A car hits an old lady who bursts into flames and melts spiderman’s balls.
The cops cut him off and the driver is scared of spiders because they throw spiders at him.
The idea is to take as much pressure off yourself being good as you can because that’s where everyone fails. they start a script and it sucks (they all do at the beginning of the process and most do at the end of the process, ass well) so they never finish them.
8 finish those 50 scenes… maybe add some… take the ones out that you don’t feel you need.
9 Then, go back and fill in each scene. fill in the dialogue. fill in the description. you’ll have at least 90 pages. you really only need 100. *try* to hit these landmarks:
pg 1-20 set the character on his journey
pg 21-50 throw a bunch of obstacles in his way
pg 51-70 he fights the obstacles but by page 70, it looks as if all is lost
pg 70-90 he figures out a totally new way to win and does. make sure that yu don’t have deus ex machina unless you’ve set it up that it would work. if it does, though, it’s not deus ex machina.
your first draft will suck like country music. you rewrite. make the main character interesting enough for your favorite actor want to pester his agent and the studio to do the movie. then each subsequent draft, focus on one character and make the character interesting enough that a star will want the part. keep rewriting until that’s true of every character… even MAN #1 and WAITRESS.
10 After you’ve made it interesting for the actors. make it interesting for the cinematographers. the wardrobe person. sound, etc.
The key is having enough people waving your script around saying I HAVE GOT TO BE A PART OF THIS MOVIE!!!!!! and then you get 30-90 million for your stupid fucking movie.
That’s how you write a fucking script, sir.
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