First 3 Steps To Writing A Screenplay - Matthew Kalil

Matthew Kalil is a writer, director, script editor, author and speaker. He has written and co-written over 40 produced episodes of TV and has received various grants, development funding and awards. Matthew’s productions have been screened and broadcast in Canada, Denmark, Morocco, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Kenya, South Africa, Thailand, the United States and the United Kingdom. Since receiving his MA in Screenwriting, he has been teaching, writing and mentoring students for over 20 years. Matthew has developed a unique system of screenwriting theory that helps beginners as well as established screenwriters get in touch with their creative core. His book, The Three Wells of Screenwriting, published by Michael Wiese productions with a foreword by Christopher Vogler, has been describes as a “breakthrough in the writing craft.” His workshops have touched and inspired thousands of participants and his gentle and insightful script editing guidance has helped many writers realize the stories they were always trying to tell. A charismatic speaker, Matthew has enjoyed presenting many times at the London Screenwriting Festival, the Cape Town International Animation Festival and the University Film and Video Association. Matthew is currently an Assistant Professor at the David Lynch MFA in screenwriting in the USA.

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#writing #screenwriting #writer

[filmcourage]

What is the most important question you ask during the screenwriting process?

[julius-stark]

I've written many scripts and one novel, and outlines are the best thing to help me actually figure out, understand, and finish a project. Even though what I write or end up with rarely lines up with the outline, having the outline as a reference is a fantastic resource. Creating a story bible also helps, even if it's a page or two, just to keep in mind what the point of the story is.

If the plot is just "this happens and then this happens and then this happens" then you know you screwed up. Plot points and major plot elements should always be character based if possible. The protagonist's choices should be driving the plot as much as possible, and when it's not it should be the antagonist forcing them to make decisions.

[DarioPaniagua-nbpf]

Okay I will say this guy is throwing some of the BEST advice on storytelling. OUTLINE OUTLINE OUTLINE

[franknyambe]

Wow ❤ I love his take on this. "Balance between screenplay rules and creativity is the way to go."

[jengrisanti]

I love what you and Matthew explore in this interview! Bravo! 🙏 ✨

[manosmehedee]

Nice little interview, i loved the process. I think it is very natural and instinctive.

[StoryMission]

The gardening metaphor will now be part of how I describe writing to people who are not creative.

[wexwuthor]

With instructions for art, a little goes a long way.

[ryanthec]

Cormac McCarthy could write books by just starting at a point and meandering. But a book is a different medium. A screenplay is about time. Good advice here.

[aaron_propp]

Structure Is A Problem In All Writing

“I believe applying ‘cookie-cutter’ sort of techniques to any story or any writer or any individual never really works, so a lot of book will tell you about like, ‘Oh, you’vv got to, you know, do an outline first, and the outline needs to look like this’ ‘this needs to be in the First Act, Second Act, Third Act, cookie-cutter, damn make your thing, and that’s it, right.”

That outdated English assignment about what you did over the summer at the beginning of the Semester to test competency will end up a confusing mess because of the story elements the (faulty) assignment brings with it. Now with writing that involves only story it’s even worse as people will treat it as if it's the exception from standards and structures because it’s creative.

To me it is just confusing how someone will go to write a story without having the general outline in their head.

Christopher Nolan once said that he starts writing as if he’s the one watching the movie that he wants to make, and he starts at the beginning. I think that’s exactly right though unlike Christopher Nolan I can only speak for novels (which are not novels in my head). The reason to be at the stage of writing words onto digital paper is to be able to put onto that canvas that story that you’re ALREADY experiencing and want to experience outside of your own head..

If you’re writing there’s no excuse (aside from a really good reason like writing for hire) that the story, novel, film, movie, cinematic experience hasn’t ALREADY demonstrated its worthiness as a finished product in your mind.

The first story I ever “outlined” was probably more of a “timeline”, and it was for “The Mission: Part Two” where I laid out the events of the Book of Acts with locations and names of characters in the various location, and I augmented the rest of the other characters’ details to fit into the Acts’ timeline.

I have made on a few occasions a short list of scenes for sections of one project so that I didn’t forget anything and to get them straight and in the right order because it can get complicated, but it’s because each scene needs to contribute to an overall picture that is already known in my head. I wanna make sure that I don’t forget to add a necessary scene on my way toward an established goal.

The best example of the ideal would be from my recent fascination with Mormonism where clearly Joseph Smith had a general outline of what the Book of Mormon would be, key points, or “beats”, and the initial pages from the Book of Mormon went missing before Joseph Smith outlined another translation which “will be the same basic story but written a little differently” to cite the South Park episode “All About The Mormons”.

Those details which Joseph Smith was not able to reproduce the same a second time are the kinds of storytelling telling details where the creativity is allowed to blossom, and the creativity and innovative epiphanies really only come while discovering them inside of the “basic story”.. Those details can be overwhelming and can require some outlining, especially when cutting between one scene to another.

If I came up with a scene in my novels that was projecting past the scene I was on, then I would write out a bold sentence making sure I knew what it was in the place where it was supposed to go while writing, creating, composing. Otherwise, I just wrote the current scene and went to the scene right after in an act of discovery.

The discovery process cannot be properly explored in an outline, though I do see how putting the few details already in your head down will allow more to grow, and that’s where the “cookie-cutter” will always fail because at a certain point it becomes simply a craft and not an art.

Structure is so brilliant to focus creativity, to pass along distillations of accurate information about people’s preferences, the revenant psychology of storytelling, etc, but the “cookie cutter” method will never beat out someone in tune with their own preferences, likes and dislikes, and who is comfortable and secure in allowing their own voice and creativity fill in the details WITHIN the outline in a process of discovery that only happens while composing.

That does not discount how the finishing of the first draft of any story is a new beginning not an end, and the phrase “writing is rewriting” comes to have a profound truth with the work taking on a more refined form, with scripts it does seem to be killing any and all forms of waste without leaving it empty, making it “hit hard”, drive the point right away, keep and maintain people’s attention. But there’s no excuse for a novel not to do the same thing.

Storytelling is like flying, provided we don’t play some game and accept the analogy starts on the ground. There’s the take off at the beginning and a landing (or crash) at the end, and a whole lot of moving through the air in between, which’ll be an adventure, but without this allegorical “3 Act Structure” to flight the activity can’t be classified as flying just like Woody called out Buzz Lightyear for in the first Toy Story movie.

“Cookie cutting” may get you ahead because most people refuse to meet the expectation or rise to meet any or most standards. “Cookie cutting” may give you a few boxes to check to force a state of approval, but it’ll never get you that extra distance to achieving for yourself what great, exceptional, or “true” artists like have achieved.

“Put words on a page, very important, and then put words in a particular order, and then put those words in an order that makes sense…”

Structure: Yes.
But there’s no need to make it “fast food”.

[Sonny]

We can hear you well! Why you have to use hands? Might as well bring a puppet then.

[AlphaOmega]

The problem is the Simpsons have already done it.