1. I have my initial idea. I don’t need to know what is going to happen from the beginning to the end. I just have an idea and play around with it in my head.
2. I search for my characters’ names around me and inside me and come up with some necessary information. I find it easier to work with my characters if they have names, even if I’m going to change them later on in the process (and yes, you are allowed to change the names of your characters). By necessary information I mean how old the characters are, whether they’re married, single, divorced, do they work, study, are unemployed etc. Of course, I will expand on all of this in the future, but for now, I’m just trying to get started.
3. I write my treatment (I follow Blake Snyder’s way of working on the treatment. At the moment, it seems to fit my writing style).
4. I write an outline of 40 to 50 scenes I want to include in my script.
5. Then I go back to re-writing my treatment. For me, an outline and the treatment are cohesive and work together on making my script ideas more explicit in my mind. One exercise (I treat treatment and outline this way) enhances the other allowing me the time and space to work on, to experiment with my ideas and to expand on my thoughts.
6. I put them both away and go off to work on another project.
7. I come back to project one and do more re-writes on my treatment and outline.
8. Once again, I move onto another project; this gives me the breathing space and the brain space I need for the idea to grow and evolve. Then, one day I wake up, usually very early in the morning, which is my most creative time, and I know precisely how my script should evolve and the direction I should take it into.
9. Treatment and outline the re-writing process is essential to me. It gives me the possibility to see my script clearly on 15-20 pages before turning the whole idea into 120 pages.
Hope you find this useful.
Happy scriptwriting
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