Every time I sit in the dark in a theater, that moment just before a movie begins, I have an expectation, a hope, a longing…

I want to be taken into another world.
I want to be swept up into the lives of the people I will meet on screen.
I want to be engaged by what I see and hear…
Dazzled by what I see and hear…
Moved by what I see and hear.

Surely, you’ve been there. You know what I’m talking about. You know that almost incandescent experience when you find yourself magically transported into a great movie.

And once we have that experience, like most good things, we look to have something similar to it again, for those transformative feelings that only a movie can create to wash over our soul.

It is that hope, that expectation we bring with us… that bubbles there somewhere in our consciousness, either up top or below the surface, in those few moments in the dark… where we wait for the movie to begin.

Try to summon up that state of emotion. Try to put yourself in that place and feel the feelings that you have in that state of anticipation.

Are you there?
Do you feel it?

Okay then. Now think on this.
That is the set of emotions our script pages need to feed.
That is the expectation our story needs to meet.
That is the hope every script reader has who reads FADE IN…
And we need to deliver the goods.

Writing is hard work. We all know that. And we spend plenty of time with butt on chair, conjuring up puzzle pieces that we will then need to fit together in a rigorous effort to assemble a story that is pleasing to the eye, that all fits together and simply… works.

But writing is also magic.
The magic of hearing lines of dialogue suddenly pop into our head.
The magic of a character surprising us by doing this instead of that.
The magic of a moment we put into words that shocks us or scares us, makes us laugh or cry.
The magic of looking up at the clock only to realize that as we’ve been immersed in our writing, several hours have passed without our noticing.
The magic of typing FADE OUT… THE END, and sitting there for those few moments as the sound of the clicking keyboard fades into silence…
That special magic of knowing that we did it…
We went on a hero’s journey that only writers can know…
And we survived…
While our story thrived.

A screenplay is many things.
One of the most fundamental things is a blueprint to make a movie.
As such its plot must have a structure.
Its characters must have functions.
And all the rest of ‘that’ stuff we’ve learned about the craft of screenwriting.

But a screenplay is also about magic.
That unquantifiable yet very real ‘thing’ we feel when that hope and expectation we have sitting in the dark before a movie begins is met during those two hours of our immersion in a cinematic story.

I know I’m not saying anything new here — the magic of movies.
I guess in this midnight session, I’m reminding myself of how important it is to be mindful of that magic in my own writing process.

And I’m also doing this: I’m asking you a question.
How do you find that magic?

If there’s no direct causality — that is if you don’t have a formula or approach that makes the magic happen — perhaps then describe times when you’ve been writing where you knew that magic was happening. What were you writing? What about that moment — the specifics of what you were doing — translated into magic on the page?

Maybe collectively we can catch a glimpse of how the magic works.

No matter how fleeting that magic may be or difficult to whip up, I am heartened by this fact: Everyone who sits down to watch a movie or to read a script has that moment, that hope, that longing… to be swept up into a story.

People want that.
People need that.
That part of human consciousness stretches back to the very beginning of storytelling.

So in a way, the hard part is already done.
Now we simply have to find…
The magic.