Scriptwriting confronts all authors with a fundamental challenge: to organize creative chaos efficiently. Between spontaneity and structure, each develops his or her own method, but all face the same need to balance the overall vision with the details that bring stories to life.
A common feature of all the writers
The fear of the blank page... How do you write a screenplay? And yet, everyone has their own drivers, their own paths to inspiration, which are rarely discussed. As Jean-Claude Carrière once said, “Imagination is a muscle.”
This is probably common to all those who write scripts is: when compiling the information, how to keep track of ideas, drama, how to control the narrative “skeleton” of the scenario?
I mean, before and during the writing stage itself. It’s a bit like squaring the circle: these are details that will be born the story in his incarnation, and it takes the same time to work on the structure, compared to the overall project.
Ways to navigate
- It is the system of “cards” on each card, a scene or an idea, or a character, and then these cards is arranged on a large table. Idea taken some assistance screenwriting software.
- It is the system of “narrative convention ’beloved Syd Field, author of the famous book” Screenplay "which reduces any scenario in three acts, with an immutable narrative structure regardless of the film. So it seems easy to navigate in these conventions. Very theoretical ...
- There is the “mind-mapping” or mind maps, graphics and hierarchical system of very summary information representation.
- There are single notes in every sense of notebooks, paper, notebooks. Human, subjective, unorganized, and perhaps, in fact, much better organized than any other system because the organization is run by our unconscious, which appear or disappear ideas and information according to his desires ...
The flexibility to change
The flexibility of modification, ie for example to add a scene or a character with automatic redial, is very important. And this is what blocks with the script in a program like Word, in which, a priori, the scenes are numbered by hand.
Prioritize information
The scenario, as a technical tool, has won be designed into a system of information hierarchy to be “managed”, manipulated, annotated, numbered ... as easily as possible. Use Word styles, or even use a database to write the screenplay, seem to be good ways.
