The nuts and bolts of writing a screenplay

The screenplay is the “central nervous system” of any screen creation, says Alice Shearman, executive director of the New Zealand Writers Guild.

And there are certain rules to follow if you want to get it into the hands of a producer.

“A screenplay is the backbone of a film, of a scripted television series. It tells everyone the story; it is the centre of all the moving parts. It’s the thing that the director takes and creates the vision with, it’s the thing that the actors create the characters from, it’s the central nervous system of any screen creation,” she told RNZ’s Nights.

In a previous life, Shearman was an agent and wanted to see writers give her a treatment, or synopsis, she said.

“I was interested in getting the writer to give me two-to-five pages of the story in a narrative form, rather than the script pages. Because if you can tell the story boiled down like that, in just a couple of pages, you’ve got a story for screen.”

Writing for screen is a craft which must be learned like any other, she said.

“Everyone has a story within them, whether you’ve got the craft or the ability to tell it is probably the difference between getting anywhere and it going nowhere.

“I recommend for people who have a screenplay within them, you need to start writing. And at the same time, you need to start reading other screenplays to work out how to tell your story for the screen. And where do you get your stories from? Everywhere, they come from everywhere.”

Screenplays by their nature are formulaic, she said.

“Unlike novels, where you are reading the brain of the writer. screenplays need to deliver to an audience in a structured fashion.

“They’re funded in a very commercial way. So, they need to be formulaic: For television, you have to write to a timeframe, if it’s linear television you have to write to an ad break. For feature films generally, you have a three-act structure.”

This is literally the beginning, middle and end of the tale, she said.

“It is the start of the film, the inciting incident, the reason why we’re here to watch the story, the middle is you’re on the journey, you’re trying to fix it, you might not be able to fix it. And the final part of the story, the third act, is the resolve – the resolution to the story.”

A screenplay is the bare bones on which the final product is built, Shearman said.

Alice Shearman
Photo: Toi Mai

“It’s literally a full piece of paper down the centre column of the page is set up, you know, it could be interior, studio, night, radio station, two people sit opposite each other talking into microphones – could be as simple as that

“And then you have your talking, so it would be your name, and your dialogue, and then it would be my name and my dialogue.”

How actors look, lighting and costume all comes later, she said.

“When you get a script that has been funded, a producer has found it, and it has been developed to a point where it can get to screen, generally there’s a director that sits in there somewhere, and the director brings the vision to life.”

At this point, the writer steps back, she said.

“Creating for screen is a team sport, you can’t do one thing without the others. If a screenwriter wanted to get a film made, they could not do it on their own. Literally, to get funded, you need a producer. And there’s a whole lot of stuff that occurs around rights assignments, copyright gets involved, risk gets involved,

“And when funders come to fund a screenplay, there has to be a separation of writer from the project in order to remove risk, because the writer will never stop writing.”

A producer may take out an option on a screenplay, she said.

“Optioning a script here in New Zealand means that it’s like renting and buying. A producer is renting a script for a period of time for a small fee, in order to try and get it produced. And then once the option has expired, the rights go back to the screenwriter. They all say goodbye and they wander off into the sunset. If all goes well, and funding is achieved, you step into a purchase you’re buying it.”

Aspiring screenwriters should learn from the masters of the past, she said.

“I would point people first to classics, I would go back to the beginning of cinema and say, look at the Charlie Chaplin films, go to the French films in the 50s and 60s, go to the US in the 60s and 70s look at the new wave, look at your eras, look at your genres and read screenplays. And you can’t be a writer if you don’t write – keep writing folks.”