The 7 Most Important Lessons I Learned about Writing from My First Screenplay at 21
Finding clarity in The Wildes: an exegesis
“The possibility of knowing history […is…] a deeply ethical dilemma: the unremitting problem of how not to betray the past.” (Unclaimed Experience, 27)
From start to finish, I wrote the first draft of The Wildes screenplay in only 20 days— but truthfully the entire writing process took me more than four years. I had been told by those close to me that my childhood would make a great story, and in 2014, I thought seriously about writing a screenplay loosely based on the childhood experiences of me and my siblings. I started jotting down my daily reminiscences and asked my siblings to send me their favourite memories as well.
Shortly after my 17th birthday, in the summer of 2015, I consulted my list of memories and started writing them out fully in screenplay (a.k.a. “script”) format. Each memory equalled one scene, and I started to string the scenes together so as to make a full script.
But after 50 pages, I stopped.
The script lacked cohesion, and more importantly, forward movement. I also did not know how to complete a story that was based on the lives of people still living, and I did not know which memories were worth writing or how much I should fictionalize.
I had less than 120 pages to capture a lifetime of memories.
I started this essay with Caruth’s quote because it captures the struggle I felt when trying to relay the complexity of my childhood and the people who were a part of it — without reducing myself or my siblings into Campbell’s monomythic hero, or fronting the people from my childhood with generic character arcs (Campbell 1–37). At the same time, I recognized it would be a mistake to defy story conventions just for the sake of it.
When I tried to write the script years ago, without any kind of plan or principles, I was motivated by a craving to write something honest, entertaining, unique, and hopeful; I wanted, more than anything, to write something that my siblings could recognize. Instead, the 50 pages I had written felt oversimplified and incriminating.
Writing the story, it seemed to me, was an impossible task. Five years ago, I gave up on trying to write the script.
Something must have changed since then, though, because with recently renewed efforts, I was able to finish my first screenplay in just 20 days. After prolonged reflection, I created a list of the circumstances and lessons that were most valuable to the completion of my bucket-list project. They are outlined below.
1 Make excellence the aspiration of editing; make progression the aspiration of writing: This was the second-most important lesson I learned in the process of successfully completing my first script. I am starting with this lesson first because this narrative will make more sense if the events unfold chronologically — and chronologically, this lesson came first.
When I attempted to write my script again in 2018 (and finally succeeded), it was in my final semester of university. Shortly after my final year of university had begun, I expressed my desire to write a screenplay to my creative writing professor. She supported my noble project, and explained that I could write such a script for credit if I designed a course based on such a task. If I made a course syllabus, found a professor willing to supervise my course, and had the course approved by the English Department, then I could write my screenplay and it would count for credit towards the completion of my degree in English Literature.
I was dumbfounded. Write a screenplay instead of essays? Sign me up!
I found a professor who was keen to support my course, and he and my creative writing professor quickly helped me to design a syllabus and get the course approved. I was ecstatic! But my mood changed on the very first day of the course, when I was suddenly struck with doubt.
I have always edited extensively as I write, oftentimes obsessively so. More often than not, the obsession with going back and re-working what I have already written stops me from thinking ahead and progressing the story forward. It is a real struggle for me to write anything of length because of this fault of mine.
Knowing this about myself, I intentionally organized the course syllabus so that the grading would be based on my ability to finish the screenplay. I designed the course so that I would start by writing a treatment (more on that later), and then write each Act of my script (1–3) as its own standalone piece. Each Act would be worth 10% (30% overall), and the final draft, with the Acts stitched together after editing, would be worth 30%. In other words, the majority of my grades would be awarded for simply finishing the damn thing to the best of my ability (obviously quality was part of the marking criteria as well).
Important note: Up until this point, the most I had written for a single class was ~20 pages, and now I had signed myself up to write 100+ pages of screenplay, as well as a 10-page and five-page treatment!*
On my first day of writing, I was filled with doubt: I would either conquer roadblocks and finish the script, or I would fail to write it and subsequently fail the course. I was not about to fail a course, however, and I soon realized that the prospect of tangible failure was a great way to change my obsession with making a perfect script into one of just “finishing the first draft.”
This was a much-needed change in my approach to writing. Moving forward, I now have more faith in my ability to complete long works of fiction in a timely matter — all it takes is faith in my ability to revise. I thoroughly enjoyed writing my first full-length script with blazing speed. I now know that, just like as it is improper to evaluate a painting only half-completed, I should wait until my work is finished to begin judging it.
2 Make a roadmap, or your story will end up in the middle of nowhere: This is the most important lesson I will cover, and for good reason. To this lesson, I owe the completion of my script.
Before I started my screenplay again, I wrote a detailed treatment before even thinking about the first draft. In screenwriting lingo, a “treatment” is generally a summary of the tone, main characters, and plot points of your script. Everything that should be included in a treatment (including page count, log lines, etcetera) varies from writer to writer — but generally speaking, a treatment is a script’s summary. Writing a treatment before the first draft was the best thing I could have done.
Writing the treatment was easy, because all I had to do was come up with ideas for plot events in a rising and falling scale of action. I did not have to worry about being too specific, because the treatment was only 10 pages long. I also was not worried about how “good” the plot points were, because I knew that treatments are often a far cry from what is included in the final draft of the script. On the other hand, because the treatment was 10 pages, I had lots of room to detail each of the important scenes in the screenplay.
Because writing the treatment demanded that I decide what happens, I was no longer left to face my biggest writing block, which arises when I end a scene and then ask myself, “What happens next?” Having a detailed treatment to which I could refer to was invaluable when later writing all 100+ pages of the script in full.
Because I wrote what happens in the treatment, writing the screenplay was only a matter of how it happens. How it happens is a much easier question for me to answer, and understanding this led to the major turning point in my productivity. I have much more confidence in my ability to finish the first draft when I have a “roadmap” (a.k.a. treatment) tucked in my proverbial tool belt.
Moreover, writing a shorter, condensed version of the treatment allowed me to separate the most important parts of the story from the less-important plot points. This summary-of-a-summary was integral to thematic decision-making and also helped me to develop essential marketing skills (i.e. in the short treatment, I wrote a logline and elevator pitch). All in all, I think the very name of the task is indicative of how integral it is to writing a good script: completing a “treatment” first is an effective way to patch up the defects that are holding you back from writing a full-length script.
3 The next two lessons I learned go hand-in-hand: Start projects early, and…
4…If creativity is flowing, open the dam. I have always tried to take advantage of writing while inspired. When I am forced to write for a deadline (i.e. most essays in university, but also some creative projects), writing can feel like a chore. Editing said “uninspired stories” is an equally gruelling task, for I am often brought face-to-face with the bland, one-dimensional characters that I had half-baked the day before. When I am in the mood to write, however, and I set down and do it, I often find myself smiling as I type out the words which come to mind, and when I edit “inspired” stories, I feel proud of my work, and am motivated to add details and create a rich world that I may proudly share with others. My idea of writing “inspired” is synonymous to others’ descriptions of the “flow state” or being “in the zone”. I find those other terms a bit cringey for some reason, so I prefer to use the term “inspired”.
I was very surprised to find that my inspiration could last the course of three weeks, all the way from the start to the finish of the script’s first draft. I think my extended inspiration was due to two major factors: I started writing early, so there were no impending deadlines which made me feel forced into the task, and I was also thinking of and writing the script continuously: on the bus, at home, and even during lectures (it’s okay; I still kept up my GPA).
5 This leads me to the next lesson I learned about my writing productivity: Anytime is the perfect time to write. If an idea came to mind during a washroom break or in conversation with a friend or even while sitting in the dentist’s chair, I tried to keep it in my head by mentally repeating it over and over until my first opportunity to write it down. This practice was sometimes troublesome for me — because my head was in the clouds, my day-to-day awareness and memory dipped substantially — but as negative as the experiences of forgetting to attend a lunch date with a friend and then a local event where I was supposed to read one of my own stories were, “unlocking” my speed-writing tool belt was well worth it.
That said, I am now aware of the negative tendencies associated with my “writer mania”, and I have been careful to combat the “syndrome’s” undesirable side effects. Two methods proved to be particularly useful moving forward — the use of calendar appointments on my phone and a forced mini-session in mindfulness before I meet with people on social occasions. Sometimes when I admit these things about myself (i.e. that I need to set a reminder to go to an author reading where I am the said author), I feel like an absolute sociopath.
6 Read everything: I stumbled upon this tip years ago in Stephen King’s On Writing. He suggests that writers should not confine themselves to only reading the genre that they write, but to read everything — from cookbooks to speculative fiction. While I may have read On Writing years ago, the advice laid dormant in the back of my mind until writing my first screenplay, The Wildes. While writing the script, and at the same time creating a new short story every week for a consecutive creative writing class, I realized the power of reading unfamiliar genres — I was amazed at how much relevant information I could draw from a comic book about understanding comics, or a psychology textbook detailing a theory of identity development, or even not from text at all, but a simple painting of a smoking pipe. Although Stephen King specifically says not to read “bad” books, one assignment that I included in my syllabus involved comparing Simon Kinberg’s accomplished and action-packed treatment of Mr. & Mrs. Smith to that of Melissa Mathison & Stephen Spielberg’s disturbing and (thankfully) unproduced E.T.: Nocturnal Fears (a.k.a. the second E.T. movie!). The activity proved to be enlightening. E.T.: Nocturnal Fears served as a foil and made clear why the treatment of Mr. & Mrs. Smith was so captivating and structurally sturdy. On the other hand, what shone in Mr. & Mrs. Smith was noticeably absent in E.T.: Nocturnal Fears, and when comparing the two, it was easy to see why the sequel to E.T. was never produced. Even though “Stephen Spielberg” was an infinitely bigger name at the time than “Simon Kinberg” (and still is, admittedly), the treatments spoke for themselves, and Stephen Spielberg didn’t have his movie produced, but Simon Kinberg did. This was encouraging news for an amateur writer like me.
On the same token, I read a few classic comic books as part of background reading before writing my script, and this task was also surprisingly insightful. Maus I and II (by Art Spiegelman) were brilliant works of art to study and learn from. Even though I am not well-versed in comic design and theory, the quality of the writing was something that I did not need a special education to understand. I admired every page I turned. The great thing about good books is that they serve as a reference that can be turned to in a moment of need, and the pages themselves are mentors to the struggling writer.
7 Speaking of which, I have finally reached the last valuable lesson which enabled me to write my first long-form creative work: Get a teammate. Having two professors in my corner was invaluable, and my supervising professor was an especially diligent help. Having a teammate in your corner — especially someone who is more intelligent and knowledgeable than you — is priceless. My supervising professor was an active listener who helped me to flush out ideas; he was an honest, critical academic who gave me insights into the flaws and strengths of my work and the work of the authors we studied; he was also a supportive mentor who encouraged the progression of my writing and challenged me to do my best, while also acknowledging my limitations and helping me to find a way around them. I always felt safe trying out new ideas without facing judgement, and that exploration enabled me to find out what kind of writer I am and what kind of writing styles and practices best suited me.
We all need teammates. I hope that this essay has been a worthwhile read, and maybe the ideas can assist you in the completion of your own project as well. Happy writing!
To mentors and people who encourage amateur writing, everywhere: thank you for guiding us along the road. It is a much more lovely journey when we have somebody to walk with.
*Writing pages in a screenplay is generally a more enjoyable and streamlined process than writing an academic essay. However, in my experience, the time and thought required is equivalent, especially if the essay is something you do not care about, and the screenplay is something you do.
