{"id":333,"date":"2011-09-27T13:56:07","date_gmt":"2011-09-27T13:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.movieoutline.com\/screenwriting-blog\/?p=333"},"modified":"2012-10-17T22:42:48","modified_gmt":"2012-10-17T22:42:48","slug":"good-screenwriting-means-being-original","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.movieoutline.com\/screenwriting-blog\/good-screenwriting-means-being-original\/","title":{"rendered":"Good Screenwriting Means Being Original"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes we, as people and writers, get lazy.\u00a0 It\u2019s only natural.\u00a0 Life can be tough.\u00a0 Writing scripts can be hard.\u00a0 Please.. my heart bleeds.\u00a0 It\u2019s time to take responsibility for your creative choices or lack thereof.\u00a0 This laziness normally comes hand in hand with familiarity.\u00a0 As soon as we become comfortable with the creative writing<\/a> process, our screenwriter\u2019s voice and all of the tricks, devices and structural paradigms that are involved, we tend to stick to what we know and settle for the easy option.<\/p>\n

The good thing about being an experienced writer is that you can normally write your scripts a lot faster than when you first started but both novice writers and pros still make the same mistake, for different reasons, by making obvious choices in their dialogue, characterization and plot construction.\u00a0 And writing scripts quickly isn\u2019t necessarily a positive thing. Sometimes it\u2019s good to chew over your narrative and really think about what you\u2019ve written.<\/p>\n

So with that in mind, from now on, I want to make sure you force yourself to be innovative. Okay, so apparently every story has already been told but don’t let that stop you from trying to add something new to the mix.\u00a0 When you reach the next major plot twist or turn take a moment to brainstorm as many alternatives as possible, however crazy they may sound.\u00a0 Don’t settle for clich\u00e9s or tried-and-tested solutions.\u00a0 Turn your original idea for the beginning or ending of a scene 180 degrees just to see where it takes you.\u00a0 It may lead you nowhere or it may give you a great idea for another scene.\u00a0 The point is that you won\u2019t know without trying.<\/p>\n

And the same goes for character development<\/a>, talking heads and choice of locations. Always go that extra mile by building unique characters that sparkle, situations and dialogue that engage us and worlds we would love to escape to.\u00a0 Don\u2019t always settle for choosing an obvious character flaw for your protagonist, dig deeper.\u00a0 Don\u2019t always settle for the first witty retort that pops into your head because there may be a better one.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not saying analyze every single creative choice you make as you write because that would naturally stunt your creative flow but in the moments following your stream of consciousness onto the page or even the next day, re-read the previous day\u2019s work and make sure you have pushed yourself as a writer. You won\u2019t regret it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes we, as people and writers, get lazy.\u00a0 It\u2019s only natural.\u00a0 Life can be tough.\u00a0 Writing scripts can be hard.\u00a0 Please.. my heart bleeds.\u00a0 It\u2019s time to take responsibility for your creative choices or lack thereof.\u00a0 This laziness normally comes hand in hand with familiarity.\u00a0 As soon as we become comfortable with the creative writing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[146,23,149,148,147,11],"class_list":["post-333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dan-bronzites-script-tips","tag-character-development","tag-creative-writing","tag-original-screenplay","tag-original-script","tag-original-story","tag-screenwriting"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.movieoutline.com\/screenwriting-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.movieoutline.com\/screenwriting-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.movieoutline.com\/screenwriting-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.movieoutline.com\/screenwriting-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.movieoutline.com\/screenwriting-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.movieoutline.com\/screenwriting-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":336,"href":"https:\/\/www.movieoutline.com\/screenwriting-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions\/336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.movieoutline.com\/screenwriting-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.movieoutline.com\/screenwriting-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.movieoutline.com\/screenwriting-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}