Has anyone here written a feature-length screenplay? How long did it take?

Has anyone here written a feature-length screenplay? How long did it take?

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Took about 2 months for me, then i read it over again and hated a lot of things.

I feel like no matter what i'll never be satisfied.

What was it about?

Currently finishing Act II. At about 80 pages or so, only the first draft.

Crime move about 5 career criminals who get recruited to a bank robbery in Arizona but they are actually being manipulated.

Ends with a lot of bloodshed and a twist ending, i sent it to Francis Ford Coppola but he rejected it.

i haven't because i'm a eurofag and nobody here gives a single fuck about making movies

I always wanted to try and be a filmmaker in europe, i feel like it would be a lot more pure and no one would be breathing down your neck like the hollywood jews.

Yeah and then "get out" came out and i threw it in the trash, mine would have been better.

What were the criminals' names?

I wanna tell you but first i wanna ask why?

I'm a eurofag too (Finland). The film industry here is just a giant circlejerk but independent filmmaking is more accessible than ever

Written about 7. They're all pretty terrible.

Takes me a couple weeks or a few months if I'm super motivated but some have taken me a year due to depression, anxiety and procrastination.

Then there's the rewriting process which never really ends (if you're me).

a screenplay? idk how anyone would do that... i have a 1000 word essay due monday and i havent even started. rip

how do I write a screenplay i need tips

Have you posted about this idea before?

I remember a similar idea being posted before and I wanted to see if this was that idea.

It's not a unique idea.

Read scripts of movies you like. You'll learn about formatting and writing at the same time

yeah... thats the problem with screenwriting. you either put enough work into it you want to see it get made, or you want to eat so you write what the studio's want and just crank em out to eat.

Yea i figured that and i have posted it before.

I don't wanna post it now, i'm gonna seem like a loser (._.)

Ive got the story board down and the film equipment, the problem is i have no friends

its a drama story about crossing the nullabor highway, university, a central autist and his struggle to fit in and his acceptance that he failed

If you want to make money you should probably write horror movies that are cheap to make. Jason Blum will buy all of them

...

anally wrecked and thoroughly pwned

Well Reservoir Dogs you know that they have a cop among them and it's pretty straightforward.

In mine the main guy is a mysterious figure who recruits these guys who are violent killers, then he dies halfway through the movie and the killers turn on each other for his share of the money.

It would be like if in Reservoir Dogs, Lawrence Tierney was a stranger who recruited Buscemi, Keitel, Madsen, Roth, etc... made them bond with each other including knowing each other's real names but he was actually playing them all and then faked his own death and stole the money.

>80 pages
>Act 2

Jesus

Okay, for one thing, you know screenplays don't have literal act breaks, right?

And two, most scripts are 80 pages, grand total.

Where did you hear that?

Most scripts are 120 pages.

Could you post just one name? You could censor the characters between the first and last letter to protect against archive searches. If indeed it's you, I liked your idea btw.
t. Aristotle

It's 100 at most. 120 is way too long especially for specs

I'm writing a heist movie from the poverty of the double crosser evading the cops and the guy he screwed over.

You're both wrong. It's between 90-100.

I can post all the names.

Tobias, Otis, Ray, Stanley, and Eddie.

If you're not going to be serious then I'm leaving this thread.

wat

those are the character names

Step 1: Come up with an idea.
Everyone's got one. You know you do. I get them while going on bike rides, and jot them down in a journal for later use. They all kinda fester and develop at their own pace. Don't be afraid to incubate more than one at a time.

Step 2: Summarize that idea.
Try to paraphrase your idea in 20 words or less. This is a good acid test to see if your idea is genuinely interesting or not. If you can't boil your idea down, then it's probably not very interesting.
Way too often I've asked someone what their story is about, only to get a scene by scene breakdown. Don't ever do this. This is story selling anathema. Break your story down into something that, in Spielberg's words, you can "Hold in your hand". Keep it short and snappy. This is how you sell stories.

Step 3: Write a short synopsis. A page, maybe a page and a half. Two pages at ABSOLUTE maximum. What you're doing here is writing the skeleton for your story. This is where a lot of writers make their biggest mistake and try to write a three act script. You won't do this, because you know better. You wrestle it into the five act structure:
>Intro
Introduce your characters and your setting. "Set up the board"
>Conceit
What is the movie actually ABOUT? What is happening that kicks the story off and drives it forward?
>Turn
The universe reacts to your characters and what they're doing. What goes wrong and how?
>Spiral
Events spiral out of control. Shit hits the fan. The "All is lost" moment
>Climax
Everything works out in the end. Not necessarily a happy ending, but a satisfying one.
Don't be afraid, if you're not 100% comfortable with your synopsis, to write more than one at a time, and juggle elements. Be creative! Have fun!

Step 4: Write the fucking script.
Using your synopsis as a guide, write your script. Don't worry about anything at this point, just do it. Don't fret over ANYTHING. I cannot stress this enough. Throw caution absolutely to the wind. It doesn't have to be perfect. Hell, it doesn't have to be 100% coherent. It just has to exist. This is probably the hardest step.

Step 5: Refine your idea. Now that you actually have your story out and down on paper (or a digital equivalent), now you take the concept and mold it like clay into something that actually works. Re-write the whole thing once or twice yourself, until you're roughly comfortable with it. Put it in a drawer for six months or so and revisit it. Show it to friends or family members. People you know whose opinions you trust. Take any criticism into account. Write and re-write it until it shines.

Step 6: Learn to let go.
While more re-writes are generally a good idea, there does come a point of diminishing returns, and even counter-productivity. Learn to recognize that point. Remember that there's no such thing as a PERFECT script. Just scripts that are good enough to detract from the less than perfect bits.
Remember George Lucas and how he continually tried to "Perfect" the Star Wars movies. Don't be George Lucas.

what are some 20 word summaries of screenplays that you've written?

Is it necessary for me to write bios for my character, when I know what they are up to? I find hard to imagine writers coming up with oh so detailed back stories when time is of the essence, it also feels forced when I try it. Never feels genuine.

20 words is actually a little strict, I should say 50 words or so.

The idea is being snappy. How little context can you get away with to convey the basic idea and appeal of your story? The less, the better.

That said:

>In a post-apocalyptic future, a young boy finds an unredeemed winning lottery ticket. He goes on an adventure, attempting to cash it in.

>In the future, an artificial intelligence designed to be a celebrity during a time when such a thing was in vogue struggles to regain that status in a world that has become jaded of the idea.

>A man finds himself on the run from the law after going back in time to kill his own grandfather to test the paradox theory, and can't get back to his own time.

>A job selling phonebooks turns out to be a secret underground ring that fakes demand for the outmoded and outdated books, to take advantage of a system blinded by bureaucracy for their own gain.

There are no rules. It all comes down two whether you can tell a story or not

How do we know if this is even good advice and not some armchair wanna-be filmmaker rp?

I wrote the best script for movie that's never gonna be made.
Neon Blades

It depend. Once I wrote one in literally 1 week just because it was inspired by something that I just experienced. Most of my other scripts I work on and off for for years on end, currently have one I've been editing for like 7 years.

I only do thing's like that to keep my own shit straight, e.g. making sure characters are always the right age they should be in different time periods so I don't end up with dank memes like Mike's granddaughter never aging.

Bios can be good.
But never TOO detailed
And never, EVER refer to them as written in stone.

Any pre-write material should be a springboard for ideas.
Bios are good for an initial spark of a character, but it's important to remember that characters are equal parts action and re-action. They effect as much in a story as the story has an affect on them, so it's impossible to 100% create a character in a vacuum.
But, again, bios can be a good starting point for where that character came from, and a baseline for how they might behave.
Though, if you're doing it right, your characters will grow and evolve and even surprise you, over the course of writing the story.

I want to write a video game script.

Good luck

That picture looks comfy as fuck. I wish I was back in the 80s/ early 90s.

Anyone feel as they learn the craft they become boxed by it? I used to just hit the ground running, but now I've got all these 'tools', I barely get lift off. I'm stuck constantly writing synposis/step-outlines and then I get bored, and get distracted by photography/watching tv etc

It'll have a story like Doom's.

writer anons post your screenplays and i will rate and critique for free

drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz7WR19NhKXqQnJKZ01qTVNPZG8/view
First 18 pages. Theres 83 in total.

My english is horrible i might add.

That's why I usually write the story in seat-of-the-pants novel form first. Then I turn that (sometimes not so rough) draft into either a screenplay or a proper novel. Or just turn the good part of it into a short story.

But I do that for my own enjoyment, not to sell them or anything.

I'm sorry but this is absolutely awful my dude

i like it

Its supposed to be a love letter to 80's action movies. Very cheesy and corny, like some weird combination of Karate Kid + Bad Taste (and vaporwave)

>drive

kek

let me guess, scorpion jackets, autism and toothpick kids?

I wrote some sceeenplays for fun. No idea what to do with them so that's it. I'm not Jewish so I have no connections to Hollywood

What makes you think you need to be jewish to be successful in Hollywood?

If not Jewish at least related to someone in Hollywood.

I'm amazed someone would write something like this

The sheer effort that goes into it.

You know that no one will ever make it right?

Your only chance is to fund it yourself, which you will never do (or you wouldn't be on Sup Forums)

So why even write it?

Why not? Not everything is about money or practical applications. Art for art sake is enough, sometimes.

>drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz7WR19NhKXqQnJKZ01qTVNPZG8/view
The beginning sounds similar to no tears for the dead.

Screenplays by themselves are not what people call "art" though.

There are now galleries for screenplays.

People only care about a screenplay when it's made into a movie.

>John (18( and Alex (19) are training with bamboo sticks. John is blond and Alex is asian. They both are athletic and early twenties.

Shit action movies get made time to time and some people have other goals than make something for profit.

Art:
the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination

I didn't say it was good art, or even skillful art, just that it was artistic expression

Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments. Man’s profound need of art lies in the fact that his cognitive faculty is conceptual, i.e., that he acquires knowledge by means of abstractions, and needs the power to bring his widest metaphysical abstractions into his immediate, perceptual awareness. Art fulfills this need: by means of a selective re-creation, it concretizes man’s fundamental view of himself and of existence. It tells man, in effect, which aspects of his experience are to be regarded as essential, significant, important. In this sense, art teaches man how to use his consciousness. It conditions or stylizes man’s consciousness by conveying to him a certain way of looking at existence.

I wrote an entire 3 seasons of a show inm my head

it's really good

Elle Driver? Are you reading somethng you copied to your little black notebook from the internet?

What do people do with their finished scripts? recently finished my first and no clue what the next step is.

get a job as a barista

send to screenwriting contests

If this is a serious question, start by sending it in producers.

Netflix and Amazon are desperate for scripts right now because they want to make all those "Originals" you've been seeing. I'd start with them.

Then just move on to sending your script to classic hollywood producers.

I've done a bunch of television spec scripts but they're usually mock ones that are taking the piss out of other things. I know they won't ever be made but I like writing things and whatever.


Oh wait, I did write one full length script but it was for musical theater, so i guess that's different

do i need to copyright it or anything before sending it out to producers

post it here first, ill copyright it for you

of course. So when the studio laughs in your face but uses some of your ideas anyway you can sue them. otherwise you're fucked.

my most recent one took a month, my last one took 3, the longest time it took me to write one was about 8 years, i ended up trashing that script because Mad Max: Fury Road came out and the movies were too similar.

>A man finds himself on the run from the law after going back in time to kill his own grandfather to test the paradox theory, and can't get back to his own time.

Hope I see this in theaters one day.

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