How to Become a Screenwriter

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Laura Turner and today we're going to talk about how to become a Screenwriter. Obviously I can't give you all the answers to actually making your living as a Screenwriter, but what I want to give you today are some ideas on how to start on your journey toward becoming this type of writer. The first thing you need to do is perhaps, you take a class on screen writing, just so you can figure out what is required of a good screenplay. Writing a movie is not based solely upon your own imagination. It is also based upon knowing the way in which you should format your script and also, the way in which you can format and structure your story. I recommend The Writer's Journey by Christopher Vogler which is based upon Joseph Campbell's book, The Hero With A Thousand Faces. Christopher's book will illustrate the point in this book which is a lot more academic and more difficult to read. But essentially, Joseph Campbell says that we tell the same story over and over again in the same sort of way. So once you know how to tell a story, and especially how to tell a story that is going to be watching the story, then, you can really start writing your screenplay. The second most important thing is how to format your screenplay. 'Cause if you're going to submit to production companies, you want to look professional since they receive so many scripts at the same time and they have to read them all, you don't want your script to be thrown into the "no-bin" just because of your bad formatting. So, you can get a program like final draft, which might help you to figure out how to format your screenplay and make it a little faster for you to write it. Or, like I said, you can take a class and figure out how to do it manually yourself which is also possible. Thirdly, to become a Screenwriter, you have to really observe the world around you. You have to start thinking about the world as a visual environment. Take a notebook with you everywhere you go and write down little scenes that you see on the street. If you see a man selling flowers at a crosswalk, write that down and say, "man at crosswalk", you know, good visual image. Think about how you can translate images from real life into your screenplays to make a nice picture for your movies. And then finally, market your screenplay. Figure out how to get and break into the business and of course the best place to do that in is LA. So if you would like to move to LA, that's probably the best place for you to go to become a Screenwriter. And good luck!"