A few students and clients have asked recently how they can practice and improve their screenwriting skills faster, so I thought we’d start a new (probably occasional) feature in this weekly newsletter. A writing challenge of sorts.
Each entry in this series will involve a prompt or exercise geared toward improving (or at least making you think about) one specific aspect of your screenwriting craft.
A lot of times we talk about screenwriting theory and technique quite broadly, and it can be hard to look at your skills in an isolated way. Most of your screenwriting practice probably comes from working on your real projects, which means you’re paying attention to a bunch of different skill sets, trying to keep all the balls in the air at the same time. Which likely means some things are getting more attention than others.
And when you’re working on real projects that matter to you, the stakes can also feel pretty high. You’re less likely to take chances and experiment for fear of “wasting” time and effort.
So I hope this series of challenges will help you get a little more micro and perhaps look at an aspect of your own screenwriting that may fly under the radar. May it also give you an opportunity to get a little wild and crazy with your writing and try things you might not otherwise.
Screenwriting Skills Challenge #1
For our first entry in this series, I’m pulling from Eric Heisserer’s excellent screenwriting book, 150 Screenwriting Challenges. In fact, it’s the very first challenge in the book:
“Take a talky scene of yours and rewrite it so that no character speaks more than ten words total. If you want, you can instead borrow a talky scene from a movie or TV series. The point is to discover the bare essentials that must be said.”
This challenge is in the “Dialogue” chapter, but it’s not just about dialogue. Yes, it will prompt you to think about what your dialogue is conveying and accomplishing. But as you’re working through this exercise, also consider:
- What’s truly vital in the scene?
- What is the point of the scene?
- How can you maintain the conflict even when the dialogue is restricted?
And for the overachievers in the group:
- Can you maintain some level of characterization and subtext while staying within the word count limit?
What’s that you say — you don’t have a scene of your own on hand to take through this exercise? Well you’re in luck! I’m including three scenes from existing movies and TV that you can use instead:
Children of Men
Mare of Easttown pilot
Crazy Rich Asians (the intended scene takes place in the mahjong hall)
Your turn!
Again, I’m sure this challenge series will be pretty occasional, but I hope you enjoy it when it does come around. I’d love to hear if seeing writing prompts and exercises pop into your inbox makes you feel excited or filled with dread (or anywhere in between). And if you try this exercise, let me know what lightbulb moments you have!