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Copy a screenplay…

Say what?

That’s right… Unless you’re in the middle of a rewrite… Unless you’re in the middle of your screenplay… Unless you’re working on your outline…

GO COPY A SCREENPLAY!

It occurred to me some years back that when I was once a young aspiring artist around 4 years old, I didn’t know how to draw. I couldn’t read too well and nobody in my family was going to teach a 4 year old anything about art… LOL.

So I went ahead and started copying the comics from the Sunday paper.

I copied my ass off and was quite committed until one day, even my Dad who is rarely impressed with ANYTHING actually made a nice comment about the copy.

There began my art school because I sure as HELL was never going to be able to afford to pay tuition. LOL.

As it turned out, I didn’t do that badly… In my twenties, I no longer had to copy anyone else’s work and I even started selling paintings here and there but THAT is another story…

When I started to TRY and write my first screenplay, there was no internet and at my local library, there was only one screenplay book (that I won’t mention here) that SUCKED.

I had a ton of notes… I felt I was a movie aficionado like Quentin Tarantino… Damn, what next?

Nothing.

I basically wrote several pages in longhand on legal pad and that was it… I should also mention that during this time, I was also a micro-budget filmmaker working mainly in Super8 and 16mm but most of the shorts that I had done up until that time were spontaneous i.e., no screenplay.

At some point in time just a little later on, I happened to be attending a Horror Movie convention here in Los Angles and it was there that I walked by a vendor that had two screenplays sitting on his table for $25 apiece.

I bought them both right there and then and $50 was A LOT OF MONEY to me back then.

The screenplays were and which just happened to be two of my favorite movies…

Later that night when I got back home, I took the brads out of BLADERUNNER and sat down at my very old but humming right along IBM Selectric with a courier ball on top and started to copy BLADERUNNER page for page.

I cannot tell you what an accomplishment it was to eventually finish typing all those pages. At first it was, admittedly… A CHORE. But within a few days, miraculous things started to happen to me…

The best way I can describe it TODAY, is that I felt as though I was almost profiling and maybe even channeling the screenwriter(s) AND the characters…

*NOTE: When I say COPY the screenplay, I do not mean sitting there blindly and not paying attention to what you are copying… I’m talking about READING every line and thinking about it… Trying to remember it so you can copy it over without going back to look at the source material.

Within a few days, I felt as if I was the screenwriter and even though I was copying the script page by page, I felt my own consciousness playing around with the story… Trying to move the characters in other directions…

When I was finished with BLADERUNNER, I went on to THE THING and did the same thing and this time around, I was even more into it.

It was as if I had found the LOST KEY on how to write a screenplay… Hell, I even set my margins and tabs so they perfectly matched those in the screenplays.

I eventually picked up little writing nuances that both screenplays had and later tweaked them into my own nuances…

I felt my way along the structure of both screenplays and started to really understand a microcosm of what the screenwriters must have gone through and THROUGH this exercise, I became hyper-aware that screenwriting was as much of a CRAFT as any other kind of writing out there.

I have since continued to copy screenplays… I try to copy at least one screenplay a year when I have some down time and every time I complete the exercise, absolutely wonderful screenwriting secrets, nuances, techniques, structure, etc. are OPENED UP TO ME.

On top of that, I have been to EVERY major screenwriting guru out there; I’ve bought and purchased every screenwriting book there is on the market; I scour eBay for OLD screenwriting books so I can see the progression and evolution that screenwriting has gone through… I read at least one screenplay a week that I’ve never read before… The list goes on.

Yet out of everything listed above, copying over screenplays of movies that I love has probably taught me the most… This single exercise has taken my own screenwriting to the professional level.

So if you’re in a place right now where you can spare a couple of weeks because the writing isn’t going so well, go copy your favorite movie’s screenplay OR go copy a movie’s screenplay that is similar to the movie that you want to write…

Pay attention to the copying… No you can’t sell the copy when you’re done… No, you can’t do a damn thing with it except be PROUD that you finished and absorbed a lot of what the original screenwriters were going through and thinking at the time…

You can’t put a price on that.

Unk



Monday: 17 July 2006|1828|Under Tips

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3 Responses to “Copy a screenplay…”

  1. The Moviequill on Sunday: 23 July 2006|1745

    You channelled me for this one didn’t you? This is one of my secret writing exercises. I tell people to do this all the time (in my local writer’s group especially.) I once tried Sophocles writing software and they used The Graduate (my fave film BTW) and I copied it. And I too do this in my spare time as a way to fire my brain into writing mode, very stimulating. I recently started Buddy Heat, my re-write of Body Heat using all men characters haha. I love Kasdan’s work so no disrespect. I am just at the point now where I don’t copy word for word to get the feel, but I add in a few of my own things too.

  2. Dave on Sunday: 23 July 2006|2146

    Also, if you print the file to a .pdf you can post it as educational material – should you feel inclined.

    I know some folks look down on it, but I’ve always enjoyed reading scripts.

  3. Justin on Sunday: 22 June 2008|1640

    To keep yourself in check while ‘copying,’ consider changing the main characters names.

    That way, you’ll always be paying careful attention to what you’re writing. once you get good at this, you can do as moviequill suggests, and expand on the characters.

    The key thing is to have fun. If it’s not fun, then whats the point?

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