“I know exactly where I’m going beforehand. I know to the half page if I’m on or off target. I draw up charts before I do a script. I endlessly chart and re-chart a movie. Before I sit down to write, I have all the scenes listed, what happens in each scene, how many pages I anticipate each scene will take. I have a running log on the film. I can look down and see what happens by page thirty, what happens by page forty, fifty, sixty and so forth. I have the whole thing timed out to a hundred and five, a hundred and ten pages. You may go two, three pages ahead or behind, you may add or drop dialogue or scenes; but if you’re two pages ahead or behind, you have to work that into the timing. Especially if you get five pages ahead, or, worse, five pages behind, then something you had planned to work on page forty may not work the same way on page forty-five.”
– Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull)
(Yet) another confirmation that when it comes to process, there are no patterns, and no best practices. Just as Charlie Kaufman finishes inspiring me to "just write," Schrader reinforces front-end organization.
It seems to me — a total and complete novice, mind you — that the best tack is to embrace a process that best suits your personality on your first project, and adjust going forward.
Also, whiskey. It seems like whiskey should fit in somewhere.
Joe said, "It seems to me — a total and complete novice, mind you — that the best tack is to embrace a process that best suits your personality on your first project, and adjust going forward."
I concur. As I've said many times, there's no right way to write. Every writer is different. Every story is different.
For every Schrader (works out everything upfront), there is Neil Simon (who claims to start writing with nothing more than the concept in mind) — a zillion variations in between.
That said, I encourage every new writer to go the outline route first. That may not be the way you end up writing, but you have to try it out as (A) it offers the best chance you'll actually finish the script and (B) most screenwriters and almost all TV writers work from outlines.
Definitely worth repeating. Definitely worth repeating.
Final Draft or whatever is the last and easiest part of the process. You've already studied JuiJitsui or FBI procedures or how Sarin gas works or the classes necessary for Economics degree.
Not to mention the seven or so characters that didn't make the cut. The two story lines that crashed and burned.
Everything doesn't have to be written – WikiPedia already wrote it – but everything has to be researched, refined and "rewritten" until people could not imagine that you actually did.
The research becomes hidden.
I concur on the whiskey. Although a shot of tequila never hurts.
As a novice writer, I was totally lost in my first script. I finished two-thirds and then it just died. Going back and doing an outline has been such a huge help to me. It is boring and tedious, but once thinks click in the outline, it brings out more and more ideas. It also helps to view the flow of the script.
Steve Knight – (Eastern Promises, Dirty Pretty Things)-said in a Script magazine interview, he seldom works from an outline. He lets the characters tell him what happens next.
I started with an outline on the first script I wrote. Halfway through I found my characters didn't like my outline. So now my process is to write a general synopsis of my concept and see where the characters take me. Sometime they say nothing and I have to take over, but soon they're back bossing me around.
Excellent! Totally agree with Schrader. I'm a compulsive planner, so it's good to see that I'm in good company. I've tried several times to "just write" but always end up feeling like I'm wasting my time, not working towards a specific meaning or purpose.
But I do understand that many spill it all out on the page first, and then clean it up afterwards.