Having some troubles with my screenplay.

[CountessaLuna]

First off, I sort of started my screenplay as a novel but decided to try it as a movie format instead. But in the novel it's of course easy to have the reader see (and read) a journal entry that pretty much is the main thing that really Makes this story. I have no clue how I'm to do this in a screenplay format without getting boring quickly~as I have the beginning character finding this journal and reading it's contents of the feelings of the girl that is to turn into the narrator. I do hope this makes sense, if you need me to put it a different way I can try.

Another thing I'm having trouble with is I try to over-complicate things and I know you don't have to write much in a screenplay other than what the person will be seeing. My question is, how much am I suppose to leave up to the directors? Cause I don't feel myself to have very good judgement in that personally.

Any help would be highly appreciated,

*~Luna

[icerose]

The most popular approach I've seen is the voice over while writing with very few entries put in. Similar to You've Got Mail where there e-mails are read in the voice of the character who wrote it.

[Verbal]

I seem to remember The Notebook handling this nicely. Maybe you'd want to check that movie and script out. Adaptation maybe too.

The trick is crafting a seamless transition that doesn't feel too Scooby-Doo-ish from the voiceover to us seeing the action that's being talked about in the journal.

Something like:

EXT. CEMETERY - DAY

CHICK climbs out of the freshly dug-up grave with "DUDE" on the headstone. She brushes off the dirt from the journal, sits on the fresh mound of dirt, opens the journal and reads.

DUDE (VO)
Dear Diary... Wow, today was sure a close call...

INT. BEDROOM - DAY

DUDE rolls around on the bed with ANOTHER WOMAN. The sound of the FRONT DOOR OPENING.

DUDE (VO) (CONT.)
Chick came home early from work when I was with Another Woman.

Dude and Another Woman jump up and examine the artwork on the wall. Chick enters.

CHICK
Hey, what's up?

DUDE
Oh, uh, you know, nothing, we were just talking about this fine piece of art on the wall.

CHICK
It's Dogs Playing Poker.

ANOTHER WOMAN
Yeah, it's really fantastic.

DUDE (VO)
Luckily, Chick fell for our story. Good thing she didn't come home ten minutes later, because she would've caught us gettin' Jiggy wit' it.

CHICK
(hurling the journal)
I knew it!

She spits into the grave and stomps off.


I don't know. Something like that.

[CountessaLuna]

Would either of you happen to know a place where I could view scripts of movies? I have thought about this because it would help me tremendously but I believe I tried searching them up in the past and didn't find anything useful :/

I guess my problem is that the journal entry is too long for a movie, but it's so perfectly worded to me for the movie I can't help buy try to make it all read by the narrator *sigh* How would one write what is going on along with what's being read? do I scatter it between lines or put it before/after?

[Verbal]

Would either of you happen to know a place where I could view scripts of movies? I have thought about this because it would help me tremendously but I believe I tried searching them up in the past and didn't find anything useful :/

I guess my problem is that the journal entry is too long for a movie, but it's so perfectly worded to me for the movie I can't help buy try to make it all read by the narrator *sigh* How would one write what is going on along with what's being read? do I scatter it between lines or put it before/after?

I like Drew's Script-O-Rama. But there are a bunch of sites.

[CountessaLuna]

Wow thanks Verbal! That site is amazing! I can't believe they have Quills and Queen of the Damned on there O.o

Thanks again! This will help =^.^=

[Verbal]

Wow thanks Verbal! That site is amazing! I can't believe they have Quills and Queen of the Damned on there O.o

Thanks again! This will help =^.^=

My pleasure. Happy reading!

[BarrelRoll]

My advice for a SW starting out is keep it in classic form. Agents want to see things that they think will sell and not something that breaks the mold, now I am not telling you to write shit, but let me put it this way, my friend wrote a screenplay which at it's heart was a space adventure, but he put a lot of science theory into it and managers and agents (the geniuses of the industry haha) told him to "take all the science out"

just pretend you are writing for children

[PsiScript]

You might taylor it (the voice over) to the beginning while credits roll, showing mc doing things relevant to the character (a montage, during which you might show the character reading the journal *in a breakfast nook with coffee, then looking far off).

[Macy]

You should take a look at The End of the Affair, one charachter reads someone's journal, and it's said in the journal writer's voice, but what is being shown is what she writes in the actual journal.

[nmstevens]

First off, I sort of started my screenplay as a novel but decided to try it as a movie format instead. But in the novel it's of course easy to have the reader see (and read) a journal entry that pretty much is the main thing that really Makes this story. I have no clue how I'm to do this in a screenplay format without getting boring quickly~as I have the beginning character finding this journal and reading it's contents of the feelings of the girl that is to turn into the narrator. I do hope this makes sense, if you need me to put it a different way I can try.

Another thing I'm having trouble with is I try to over-complicate things and I know you don't have to write much in a screenplay other than what the person will be seeing. My question is, how much am I suppose to leave up to the directors? Cause I don't feel myself to have very good judgement in that personally.

Any help would be highly appreciated,

*~Luna


The best advice I could give you, I think, would be to take a deep breath and take a step back, because right now you seem stuck in some odd middle ground between writing something original -- a screenplay -- and adapting something that was never really completed -- your novel.

What you really need to do is to go back to something more basic and that's the underlying story -- the underlying events that you intend to embody in whatever medium -- novel, play, motion picture, opera -- whatever, that you choose to express it in.

But what you're doing is taking a weird detour -- going from the fundamental source -- the initial story form -- to the form of an uncompleted novel and from there to a screenplay.

What you need to do is go back to that initial form, which doesn't involve any particular "manner of telling" -- not people writing in journals, not people singing arias, or doing an opening dance number or a montage sequence.

If you were writing a novel based on a movie you wouldn't start it off with on opening montage, or by writing down the lyrics to a song, if the movie was a musical.

You'd cut yourself off, completely, from that medium's "manner of telling the story" and go back to basics.

What is the *story* -- what happens? Not how is the information being conveyed by somebody to somebody else. That is the structure that relates to a particular medium -- in this case the medium of the novel.

Well, if I was writing an opera, somebody would be singing that stuff to somebody else -- but I wouldn't be putting that in a movie either.

Don't clutter yourself up with thinking about how to "save" stuff that works great in one form when you move into another.

Just go back to first things. Just start with your initial premise. Throw everything else out. Then ask yourself. How do I make a movie based on this premise. What are actions, who are the characters? What do they do? Where do they go? Some things may be similar. Many things may be completely different. And they ought to be different because though you are developing the same premise, you are doing it in a completely different medium -- as different from the novel as theatre or opera is.

Don't ever even look at the novel again.

Just write the movie based on that premise.

NMS

[LIguy257]

Also check out www.simplyscripts.com - great site with tons of stuff.

[Steflesslie]

One movie that handled the letters/journals really well was 'Dear John' Based on the best-selling novel by Nicholas Sparks. Perhaps have a look at that.

The voice over definately works as well as flash backs of the day it was written and the day it was read. It is very effective.

For example.

INT. LAURA'S* BEDROOM - DAY

Laura sits on the carpet searching through some old boxes where she finds a dust journal. She opens to investigate.

MOTHER* (V.O)
Today is the one month anniversary of my husband's disappearance and the day of my doctors appointment. And yes, you guessed it. I'm pregnant.

Laura becomes shocked and sits back against the wall to read further.

(then flash back to the mother writing the letter) etc.

best of luck, hope I helped.

[squalid]

Show don't tell. The voice over, title cards with dates and times and other explanatory methods are generally cheap gimmicks for a writer to use because he or she hasn't figured out how to show the story. Use the character's dialog and objects to show action and move it forward. When you work these problems out, you'll find you have powerful story without telling (explaining) the viewer what he or she is looking at.

I suggest the screenplays of works by Sergio Leone, Roman Polanski, Luis Bunuel, Howard Hawks, John Ford, Akira Kurosawa, Alain Renais, David Lean, Ingmar Bergman, Milos Foreman, Guillermo del Toro, etc.