Your First Screenplay: The MOST IMPORTANT Tips to Get Started

Writing your first screenplay is an exciting but daunting challenge. You have so many great ideas in your head but don’t know how to correctly write them down to create a compelling screenplay.

Nevertheless, don’t feel too alone in this, as every great writer has had to face this moment in their career. Fortunately, the task does not have to be as complicated and unknowable as it might initially seem. There is plenty of help all around you from the many writers that have previously forged this path.

So we’ve put together some key lessons to learn from your first screenplay that will help you organize your ideas, learn the correct script format and structure, and give you tips to enhance the experience of writing your first screenplay as a whole.

1. Read Books and Screenplays

The first lesson you will take from writing your first screenplay is that reading books and screenplays is the ideal way to start your journey.

If you attempt to sit down with a slight idea and start writing, you will soon realize that there will be many holes in your screenplay. These holes frustrate you and eventually, you will steer to another idea with another screenplay.

To avoid this, you should have a clear reference point for what you are doing. Books, screenplays and articles can help you acquire this knowledge. Some of them may contain exercises to make you engage with the content. These sources are great for new writers as they serve as guides for the screenwriting basics.

It’s also important, however, to read some actual screenplays.

• Choose one or two movies you enjoy and look their screenplays up online, for example.
• Authentic scripts provide you with an insight into how the elements that the books teach are used.
• Additionally, every writer has their own style. So, seeing different scripts helps you identify all the unique ways people write as well as encourage you to find your own approach.

Starting to write a screenplay without knowing how screenplays look, feel and flow is like trying to build something from scratch. You might know how it eventually looks and the basic elements of putting it together. But you don’t have any sense of the details that will make it truly work.

You’ll end up giving yourself more to do in the end by not understanding the core tenets of putting a screenplay together. So it’s, therefore, vital you have a familiarity with the form before you get started writing.