How to Write a Screenplay – Just Write!

When you’re first learning how to write a movie script, you should treat screenwriting like a workout: Set goals, and as time goes by and you continue to achieve your goals, increase the difficulty of the routine. You won’t be able to write ten pages a day when you’re first learning how to write a movie script, and that’s perfectly fine, no one is asking you to do that. Even if you only do one page a day, if you aim for a 90 page script goal, that gives you more than 4 full scripts if you write every day for a year. No matter how lazy you think you are, anyone can write a script (not a good one, but a complete script) if they just put their minds to it and focus.

The biggest thing that seems to derail people learning to write a movie script is that age old question of “What do I write about?” Here’s a big secret most people won’t tell you: it doesn’t matter. At first, you’re just trying to stimulate your creativity, and that’s all that really matters right now. You can literally write about whatever you want, there are no rules when it comes to these types of exercises, so all you need to worry about is using that time as an opportunity to get comfortable with the actual act of writing. You should also use it as a time to familiarize yourself with the screenwriting format (which can be helpful with the help of screenwriting programs, such as Final Draft), as there are some things that will prevent a professional from reading your script. more quickly. to see that it is not correctly formatted.

In short, this is all to say that no matter how, where, when, or why, the only thing you need to do to learn how to write a movie script (at least in the beginning) is actually write. I went to school with a lot of kids who, in my screenwriting classes, said they wanted to be writers, but when the time came, they turned in half-finished scripts or none at all. Are any of them successful writers now? No. Do you wonder why?