Machinima 4 newbs: Scriptwriting

Writing from the land of Italy this week is Farinar, giving you some tips and tricks about writing your own script for the Script-contest that is run by the Weekly Spotlight-thread.

In the jungle of machinima-guides, there seems to be a critical lack of guides explaining the process of writing a script or screenplay as it is called professionally. Writing the script is the most important thing during your pre-production and shouldn’t be underestimated. There are a couple of things that I think a good script should include:

- A quick synopsis of the plot-line. This way you will have the story planned beforehand and already have the story from beginning to end. This keeps you from improvising, as improvising often gives a bad result with a beginning and an end that doesn’t really bind together. By making a quick synopsis you can just delete a few sentences to adjust the story, while you will maybe have to delete pages to make up for it if improvising while writing the script. Even if you have a clear picture of your story, write the synopsis as it will give you a better view and allow any changes to be written. Also, it keeps you from forgetting anything.

- A list of characters (or cast list). Write down a list of the characters in the movie – not only the main characters, but everyone who has a line or does an action. That way you can easily add voice-actors to the list as you find them. It will help you keep your script clean and professional. I suggest adding characters to the list as they appear in the script, that way you won’t forget anyone.

- Character-descriptions. Following the character list (or included in the character list), this is a description of the important characters in the movie. Here you write their back-story, how they look upon the dilemma (see dilemma), how they interact with the other characters, their relation to the other characters and what their personality is. Also write their strengths and weaknesses. This will help you a lot when writing your script, as you know how the specific character would react to a situation. (If your character hates orcs then of course he won’t agree to trust them.) I like to make these pretty extensive. This may also include mindmaps, which are good for an overview of your character and its attributes.

There are several ways to write a script, and every person has their special style or flow. But the place to begin is getting ideas. I usually get ideas when I’m bored, about to go to bed or riding the bus. Luckily I have access to a piece of paper in all three situations, so I write it down to remember it. A scene can come to my mind when I listen to some cool music like Immediate Music or Hans Zimmer, but also while listening to rock etc. If you have your basic ideas (for example a blood elf hitman for hire falling in love) and a couple of scene ideas (love scene, fight scene) it’s all about binding it together. This is done through the story. If your story is bad, then the scenes won’t fit together – we want to know exactly why they fight and why they kiss right? Bad story makes bad movie. Here are few clichés to avoid:

- Someone close to your main-character has been killed and he/she now seeks revenge. This one is really overused.
- Your main character has lost his/her memory and must retrieve it.
- The whole “chosen one” thing – avoid that. Seriously.

Having your ideas bound together by the story should be more than enough to write your synopsis. Now it’s time to begin writing your script. As said before, there are many different ways to do this. But there are a few things that might be nice to note in the script such as cameramovement (any specific movement), scenedescription (where and when does this scene take place), dialogue (what your characters say) and actions (what your characters do and what happens). To tell these apart, you can use different fonts or styles. Here is an example of a scene: