screenwriters toolkit

A great way to understand who we are is to understand our ability to handle conflict. Your Task: Use a character from a screenplay you’re working on, or pull a character from one of your favorite movies. Make a list of 10 problems that someone might encounter that are unrelated to their own story. An example problem could be: You’re camping and there’s a huge rainstorm. You discover a hole in your tent. Now, getting into your characters’ mind, solve these problems.

Our own fears can limit what we do and who our characters are. Acknowledging these fears can release their grasp on our work. Your task: Visually brainstorm the topic, “My fears” by creating a mind map. Now, write for ten minutes, answering the question: What does fear look like in my writing life?

More info on making mind maps can be found here:
http://www.jcu.edu.au/studying/services/studyskills/mindmap/howto.html
http://www.peterussell.com/Mindmaps/HowTo.html

Use this exercise to get a better understanding of how place effects everything in a scene. Your Task: Pick 5 to 10 random photographs and write 1-page scenes in these locations.

Learning the balance between creating the rich environment of our character’s home and writing simply without trying to do an art director’s job is an important screenwriters’ goal. Your Task: Take two passes to describe the place where your character lives. In the first pass, write a 1-page description using rich imagery. In the second pass, whittle this page to a 1-sentence synopsis.

Location in a story is directly effected by the time this story is set in. Your Task: Take a scene from a movie and re-write it 3 times. Use the same location each time. Change the time of the scene to 100 years ago, 500 years ago and 50 years in the future.

A plot device is a person or object in a story that is used to advance the plot. Your task: Identify the plot and at least one plot device in 5 movies.

A Hero is often considered to be someone who was born with extraordinary talents and abilities. But are heroes really superior beings? I think not. In my opinion, heroes are everyday people who take on challenging obstacles to reach noble goals. Everyone has been or will be a hero in their lifetime. Your task: Write a 1-page synopsis of your life as a hero’s journey. Identify the goal you’re working toward and 3 challenges faced. Craft this synopsis in a creative way, telling your story interestingly.

Usually, a movie’s plot is what draws me to it and its’ plot twists are what keep me there. Your Task: Watch 10 movies and identify the turning points in the plot. Answer these questions: How did these turning points happen? Was there a consistent theme from movie to movie?

There are certain characteristics that give a movie its’ genre. For example, all comedies are intended to make people laugh. Focusing on comedies for this exercise, let’s take a lesson on what makes you laugh. Your Task: Watch a comedy that you think is actually funny. Watch it again. On the second time through, stop the movie every time you laugh and make a log of the joke. When you’re done, look at all the jokes and free-write for 10-minutes on the question: What’s the common thread in these jokes that really makes me laugh?

Taking a movie out of the genre it was written for can be an excellent lesson in understanding what a genre is. Your Task: Re-write your favorite scene from a movie as if it were part of 1. A western; 2. A horror film; and 3. A science fiction film.