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Never Wait--Screenwriting for fun and profit


Zixar
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I've dabbled with screenwriting off and on (mostly off) for the past 3 years. I've started three different screenplays with what I thought were entertaining ideas, only to have inspiration flee when I actually got down to putting fingers to keyboard.

Thank God there are actually people who are good at screenwriting. One of them is Terry Rossio, whom you've never heard of, but you're bound to have seen at least one of the movies that he and his partner, Ted Elliot, have cowritten--like Pirates of the Caribbean.

Terry offers valuable advice to screenwriters on his website. Here's a column he wrote that doesn't just apply to screenwriters, it applies to us all. Give it a try, you might find it highly interesting. Never Wait, by Terry Rossio

Edited by Kit Sober
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Shell: You might want to follow the link in the column to writer/director Frank Darabont's (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile) piece on the difference between a successful moviemaker and a wannabe. More good advice generally applicable to any field of endeavor.

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I dug out the 18 pages of the first script I started last night and reread them. The script still sucks, but I'm starting to think it might be salvageable. I'm tempted to put a link to it and ask for critiques, but there may not be enough to go on.

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Zix -- same happens with me and the fiddle tunes I write. I have recordings of me putting down the basic idea, and to hear the the various tunes now (as opposed to the original "idea") is like night and day.

Sounds similar to your 18-page thing there. I re-worked some "phrases" in the tunes, added some new ones, took out others, and the end product was a GOOD tune. If you re-work your manuscript, I'm betting it'll turn out great!

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quote:
Originally posted by notinKansasanymore:

If you want others to give input on your partial screenplay, you may want to consider sending it to them privately, rather then posting a link. It would be very sad for anyone on "the internet" to steal your idea.


In addition, it could be bad in what I believe is an unprecidented way. If you were to write a book and post it online, the potential publishers you go to would offer you less money because you would be effectively offering them a second run of your book, which you "published" on the internet already. I don't know if screenplays would work the same way, but I would think it would be the same or worse.

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That's a common concern, but it's usually unfounded. In the first place, the way the copyright law now works is that a work is copyrighted as soon as the author writes it. It does not have to be registered first. In the second place, there's no incentive for an editor or producer to steal anyone's work--it's cheaper (and more ethical, of course) just to pay the original author, since they'll have to pay someone for it anyway. Paying the original author also eliminates a potential lawsuit, and since screenplay prices are set by the Writers' Guild of America anyway, it's the same cost to them whoever writes it. (Actually, it costs them MORE to have a WGA member write it, since they don't have to pay you Guild minimums if you aren't yet a WGA member.)

In the second place, it's not possible to copyright an idea, only the execution of an idea. In fact, you can't even copyright a title, believe it or not. You can call your movie "The Matrix" if you want to, and the Wachowski brothers can't do squat--unless you use their characters' names or any of their dialogue. Then they can sue you. There are exceptions for certain titles-as-franchise, like "Gone With The Wind" or "Star Wars", perhaps, but they're the exception rather than the rule. Actually, I borrowed (er, swiped) the core idea for the screenplay from a well-known book, except that I changed the time period, characters, motivations, locations, scope of the plot, and the resolution. That's quite legal. Otherwise every single "boy loves girl, but parents keep them apart" story would be an illegal ripoff of Romeo and Juliet.

I do appreciate the concern, though. I still don't know if it's worth showing anyone else yet--or at all. It's not even the complete first act, so there's probably not enough material for someone to judge it. Jury's still out...

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