#ZD30SCRIPT-Writing A Script In 30 Days
- Rishi
- Dec 2, 2015
- 5 min read
To date, I’d only written two feature length film scripts. One took me over a year to write, the other took about 8 months. That all changed on 30th November 2015 when I managed to complete a third film script in one month. This is, of course, was the “Zero Draft 30 Script” challenge set by Scott Myers (Twitter account: @GoIntoTheStory).
I’ve known for a few years that the #NaNoWriMo existed where writers are challenged to write a novel in the month of November but in mid-October, I noticed Scott had started the hashtag #ZD30SCRIPT on Twitter. After further investigation, I realised what he wanted scriptwriters to do: Write a film script in 30 days. Now this was something I could get behind.
Over the years, I’ve been writing outlines, scenes, ideas for films on everything from my iPhone to my computer, to a dusty little notebook I keep on the side of my bed. Sometimes, I’ll have an idea for a film, a concept that I think will work so well, that I dive straight in: Write roughly 10 pages include everything from the inciting incident to introducing the protagonist/antagonist dynamic but, by page 18, I’ve run out of steam or worse, lost interest!
My Script folder on my computer is an elephant graveyard of deserted scripts, concepts and ideas. I needed a metaphorical kick up the backside and #ZD30SCRIPT was exactly what I needed to slap me out of apathy.
Firstly, I needed to look at the many abandoned scripts I had left strewn in my destructive wake. I knew most of them had potential, most of them began from that germ of an idea that I knew would work as a film. Much like myself, I needed to resuscitate one of them, look at what made me excited about writing that script in the first place and then put some real thought into where I wanted it to go.
There was one that I always kept coming back to over the years. It was called “Sunshowers”. It was a script that I always thought about. The characters, the motivations, what I could see it looking like on the big screen. When you’re a scriptwriter, you need to dream big or else the crushing realisation of actually trying to get a film sold wears you down. Once I had chosen “Sunshowers” as the script that I would take on this 30 day journey with me, I had to have a plan. My plan was to write a 90 page script.
90 pages is lean, 90 pages is fast, 90 pages means writing a script with punchy descriptions and punchy dialogue. It means cutting out all the fat and leaving the reader with something they can digest easily. Having established 90 pages as my marker, using my very basic maths skills, I deduced that I needed to 3 pages a day to complete the script within 30 days. 3 PAGES A DAY! Easy, I thought to myself. I write 3 pages for fun sometimes, now all I got to do is connect each one of those 3 pages a day into a fully coherent set of scenes and boom, I’ve got myself a script. So I started prepping like mad. I wasn’t going to fall into my old trait of starting a script and then become disinterested. This needed real foundation and groundwork. Characters, arcs, action, outline. I’ve decided that I would outline everything from top to bottom.
Then I got down to work. I think I write visually, I write what I see. That may be the wrong way to write but I guess everyone is different. Having an outline to work from really helped. Whenever the old “oh I can’t be bothered” feelings started reeling to the front of my mind, I had my outline to help me. It was my roadmap, my SATNAV, to guide me back on track and remind me why I was doing this challenge in the first place. I have to admit that I did start to hit a wall a couple of times in the month. I had commitments which meant two weekends were blown right out of the water but even then, I never stopped thinking, never stopped writing. I’d use Notes on my iPhone to jot down ideas, scenes, anything. So when I was back at home, staring at the script, I could refer back to them.
As I wrote the script, all the advice I’ve received from mentors, friends, script readers and the twitter community kept me sane and in check. I’ve been told that nowadays, scripts don’t have the luxury of 10 pages to hook a reader, it needs to be done on page 1. I’ve been told that the inciting incident should happen early, real early, earlier than page 10. The antagonist should have their motivations intertwined with the protagonist. I don’t know if I follow every rule of scriptwriting, I don’t think anyone does but I knew what type of script I was writing and I knew certain events had to happen. It may be cliched, but I think enough spin on it to be “the same, but different”.
There were times when I went off my outline and started writing freestyle. Adding aspects to scenes that didn’t need to be there but my initial thought was “Write everything down, kill your baby afterwards in the re-write”. So if my secondary character felt like going on a huge rant for the sake of it (and because I wanted to), I did it. Who's going to stop me? And then, come 30th November, after much internal fighting, loads of procrastination and times when I thought “what am I doing?” I finally typed the words FADE OUT.
It felt good, like eating cold pizza. What I’ve written is a rambling mess, I know that. But it’s my rambling mess and that’s when I realised what ZD30SCRIPT was all about. It was about getting over those hurdles that stopped you from writing a script in the first place. 30 days ago, I had an incoherent jumbled set of notes. Now, I have a script which I can say: “Yeah, I did this”. Much like my future as a scriptwriter, I don’t know what will happen to this script but I do know that I now have a script that I can add to my portfolio which thankfully is ever expanding with short films. To have written three feature length scripts feels good. Each one is different, each one is set in a different genre but I like to think that it has my style of writing running through all of them which readers or agents can identify with.
So thank you Scott and thank you to all the writers who took part in ZDSCRIPT30. All the messages on Twitter, the posts on Facebook, the comments of motivation and just knowing that there is a group of writers out there going through the same struggle just like you are. And then, at the end of the day, you get to type: FADE OUT and you remember why you did in it the first place….because writing is our passion, it’s in our blood, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
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