I’ve been typing countless amounts of words throughout my media degree. However, after a week of Picture This I’ve realised that none of the writing I’ve completed has been creative. I’ve never considered creative writing to be my forte, but how else am I going to articulate ideas from page to screen in a way that honours a good idea.

What I learnt in the studio this week that highlighted my previous lack of experience with screenwriting was that changing the font to “Cambria” does not make your story a script. After reading and critiquing the scripts given in class, I think I experienced an appreciation for screenwriting as an art that had I never noticed. This course has been so visual in the literal sense that I’ve forgotten that the essence of any film is the script. And if the script is visual, the adaptation to screen stays true to the screenwriters vision.

Callie Khouri’s Thelma & Louise had descriptions that expressed so much in so little. “Louise is in her early thirties, but too old to be doing this” is a line I keep repeating in my head. This one line not only describes a character, but offers the writers viewpoint that early thirties is not “too old”. This shows the writers belief that the character has more potential than to be doing this – foreshadowing the events of the rest of the screenplay. I think what my scripts have been lacking is a full realisation of a character. Characters  in my current scripts are vessels for dialogue and action and nothing else. Here is an example from a previous script of mine.

Reading this now, there is nothing to discern between the character of Dora and Sally; in fact ‘Dora’ was the example name used in the script template. That’s how little attention I payed towards my characters. This script has some wild action (which I barely describe) and it’s something I would want to work on throughout the semester. Taking a couple of notes from the class, here is a reworking of this text:

1. EXT. TRAM STOP. DAY

DORA waits for a tram at the stop. She’s forgotten her sunglasses and is squinting in the bright mid-day sunlight. Her grip is tight around an unmarked cardboard box, the weight of which causes her to shuffle in her sneakers. SALLY, unperturbed by her friends uncomfort, slouches alongside Dora picking at her nails.

This was my first rewrite of this script. To incorporate the elimination of ‘to be verbs’ as mentioned in the reading by McKee, I’ll rewrite this passage:

DORA waits for a tram at the stop. Once again forgetting to bring her sunglasses, she squints in the bright mid-day sun. Her hands tightly grip an unmarked cardboard box, the weight of which causes her to shuffle in her sneakers. SALLY, unperturbed by her friends uncomfort, slouches alongside Dora picking at her nails.