Writing and Appreciating Your Script, Moment to Moment

We have all heard about how important it is to be present, to stay aware of the power of the moment and squeeze every drop from this life and live it to the fullest. We don’t often hear an argument against this, as if someone out there is going to present some kind of counterpoint lecture or TEDTalk about why we shouldn’t appreciate what we have in the current moment. We know this. We’ll do it. Relax. Thanks for the reminder. Yes, fine, I’ll appreciate my life. Duh.

But how often do we apply the same practice of appreciating a moment to the development of our screenplays? How often do you come up with an idea, build your personal excitement around how you believe this could be ”the one”, and completely believe that this is the idea that will put your name on the map and make you a fortune? If you’re like me, you probably have moments like this on a regular basis, coming up with amazing ideas for movies or TV shows, and boom! You’re off like an Olympian, opening up Final Draft, and you’ve already written the first few scenes of your script. Yes! This is going to be incredible. Then what happens?

You get to page 30 and realize you have no idea where the story is going. You lose momentum and start to doubt how amazing this idea actually is, and you let those 30 pages sit in some digital corner of your computer’s hard drive for a few months, hoping that maybe it will figure itself out. “If only I could Google my screenplay and find out how someone else finished it.”

This blog post is NOT to try and inspire you to enjoy your life’s little moments, or to present puns like, “Life is a gift. Why do you think it’s called the present?” We’ve heard these a thousand times or more, and we’re bombarded by social media memes so often that we’ve begun to roll our eyes at wonderful nuggets of wisdom and advice. It’s actually kind of comical how we’ve begun to ignore what actually is important because we’re sick of being reminded of it all. But…

This blog post is instead meant to shift your focus onto the importance of moments during the development of your project. Every now and then you’ll get an idea for a scene and then figure out how to apply that scene to a bigger story, but more often than not, we come up with a concept that has a cool hook and go right to Save The Cat and try to “beat out” what happens and when. Jumping from a basic concept to trying to beat out what happens in your story is skipping a ton of steps, and most of those steps have to do with the whole purpose for telling the story in the first place - emotion! What I’ve noticed during most, if not all of my work with writers is that we don’t do the work that is needed in terms of working through the types of possible moments that will present the foundation of the story idea itself. Within those moments lie the inherent emotion, and ultimately the story itself. So…

What I have my writers do as part of their early brainstorming exercises, and after they have written the very basic and general approach to the concept itself, is have them create extensive character breakdowns and backstories that show us who this character is on an emotional level; his or her traits, flaws, beliefs, etc. Nothing new with this exercise. But once these general approaches are made, written, and sent to me, I pull out specific sentences that they have written in their character breakdowns and conceptual summary, and present those sentences as tools to brainstorm things like…you guessed it, moments.

For instance, sometimes a writer presents some form of a sentence in the character breakdown like, “Miranda is a sexually-repressed, romantically hopeless geek who works as a secretary for the wealthiest man in America.” And then the writer continues on writing about who Miranda is, the family she came from, who her friends might be, the name of her cat, etc etc. This is all grouped in a big chunk paragraph, and ultimately it’s fine. It’s presenting who Miranda is, and it’s enjoyable to get a sense of this character. But what I push the writer to do is pull out that sentence of, “Miranda is a sexually-repressed, romantically hopeless geek who works as a secretary for the wealthiest man in America”, and put it at the top of a list with a basic system of numbers below it. It would look something like this:

Miranda is a sexually-repressed, romantically hopeless geek who works as a secretary for the wealthiest man in America.
1…
2…
3…
And so on…

So you use those numbered lists I show above as a way to start brainstorming a list of moments and scenes that SHOW Miranda as a sexually repressed, romantically hopeless geek working as a secretary for the wealthiest man in America. As many as you can! Show me what we will see on screen that will then show the audience who Miranda is in this specific way. Through this brainstorming, we are now developing actual moments that could occur on screen and, in a way, beginning the story writing process, but without worrying about whether or not we have the whole story figured out; the “what happens and when and why” stuff can be held off for later development. Let’s just see who this person is and how she interacts with the world around her - whether these scenes and moments are used in the script or not.

I guarantee that if you set a goal to come up with 25 different ways to show Miranda in this light, you will come up with even more ideas about who the characters are around her, where she lives and why she lives that way, and eventually (and most importantly) what Miranda needs to learn in order to evolve and change. Or if you’re developing a TV series, you’ve just come up with a ton of possible storylines and situations for future episodes, all based on a list of brainstormed moments. You can then do the same thing for other sentences in your character breakdowns and conceptual summary – pull out a sentence and come up with as many ideas for moments and scenes that SHOW the idea behind the sentence. It’s important to focus on the word “show”, because you have all heard that term, “show don’t tell”. No need for me to explain what that means. You get it. If you don’t, email me and I’ll explain.

Your story idea and any resulting screenplay is built upon examples of the initial conceptual idea you had when you had that moment of, “Oh my God, this is the greatest idea ever.” Within that initial idea and concept are scenes and moments that present that idea and concept in a visual way. We work in a visual medium. We sit down in front of movie and television screens and we watch. Yes, we of course listen, but the first thing we do as audience members is watch. We want to be SHOWN a story, not TOLD. So show your audience what your idea is. Show them how fun your idea is through moments that contain pieces of your overall idea in fun, dramatic, and exciting ways. This is a direct reference to that lovely term, "the recurring moment".

Do the work and focus on the moments that create the foundation of your idea. Even if some of those scene ideas and brainstormed moments won’t exist in the script itself. You, the writer, need to consider all possible ways your story can be presented on screen in order to draw out the very best version of your story.

Go after it! Your moment awaits.