Okay class, today’s lesson is a simple one. If you’re having trouble writing scripts, it may simply be that you haven’t read many or any at all. Reading books, and watching movies and TV shows can definitely help with story structure, but until you’ve read your fair share of scripts you won’t likely have an understanding of how to write one properly. One of the great things about reading scripts is you can read them much faster than any book. One page translates to about one minute in screen time, so you can read just about as fast as if you were watching yourself.

Writing a script is simple. Writing a good script is not. My suggestion is to pick some of your favorite movies and TV pilots and read the scripts for them. Also watch them so you can see how the page translates onto the screen. Sometimes you’ll be surprised by the differences. Read whatever draft you can find online. Almost anything you can think of is available. Read a good handful of them. You can be the judge of when you feel you understand how they’re written, but 10 might be a good number to start with.

This exercise can be really fun, because it’ll help you get into the mind of the writer that created the screenplay and what they were thinking the movie or show would be before it was filmed. I’ll go into another great tip building off of this one next week. I’ve got an awesome link with all the resources you should need right here:

Any Possibility: 10 RESOURCES TO READ SCREENPLAYS ONLINE FOR FREE