Screenwriting

Background Information

Disco Pigs

The story of ‘Disco Pigs’ is a rite of passage for two Irish teenagers growing up in Cork City. The couple – Pig (Cillian Murphy) and Runt (Elaine Cassidy) – were born on the same day at the same hospital. As babes, they linked hands mystically across the edges of their cradles. Throughout childhood they developed their private womb-like world, holding hands during the night through holes in their bedroom walls and conversing in practically incomprehensible baby-talk mixed with a strong North Cork dialect. However, their fragile love story runs into trouble in the teenage years when one begins to mature faster than the other.

Originally staged in Cork, Ireland, ‘Disco Pigs’ won the Best Production award at the 1996 Dublin Theatre Festival and has played to international acclaim in America, Britain, France, Germany, Australia and Canada. The film version was exhibited at the 51^st Berlin International Film Festival (Berlin Internationale Filmfestspiele), February 2001. A modest £1.8 million budget was provided by Renaissance Films (makers of ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ and ‘The Madness of King George’) and the Irish Film Board.

‘Disco Pigs’ is a romantic drama, the first feature film directed by Kirsten Sheridan, it stars Elaine Cassidy, Cillian Murphy, Eleanor Methven and Geraldine O'Rawe. It is produced by Ed Guiney (UK/Ireland), based on a screenplay by Enda Walsh. Running time: 94 mins.

‘Father Ted’ is a modern Channel 4 television sitcom – co-written by Graham Linehan and Arthur Matthews – about the misadventures of three anarchic parish priests banished to the remote Craggy Island off the west coast of Ireland. The principal characters are the chain-smoking dreamer, Father Ted Crilly (the late Dermot Morgan), the youthfully naïve Father Dougal Maguire (Ardal O'Hanlon), the eccentric alcoholic reprobate, Father Jack Hackett (Frank Kelly) and the housekeeper Mrs Doyle (Pauline McLynn).

The sitcom’s Channel 4 website adds: ‘Three priests. One housekeeper. A gaggle of supporting priests. A bunch of nuns. A few late-night Ludo matches. The most consistently awful weather in the world… Trying desperately to remain sane in the face of all this is Father Ted Crilly, who anxiously plays host to a number of bemused and bemusing guests - aggressive bishops, shy nuns - a never-ending parade of fellow priests and on one memorable occasion a famous lady novelist… Constantly inveigled into playing Devil's advocate - from picketing a blasphemous movie to becoming an Elvis lookalike - Ted's dreams are of a parish in Las Vegas and a life free from embarrassment. Well, perhaps even an hour free from embarrassment.'

The three series (25 episodes) of Father Ted transmitted by Channel 4 between 1995-98 earned numerous prestigious BAFTA awards.

Finding your own screen story idea

Reel stories are often real stories personally known to the writer. Stories from your own experience have the advantage of being original, fresh and realistic.

Another approach for finding ideas to create your own story is to carry a notebook at all times and develop the habit of jotting down any promising ideas, jokes, situations, ironic twists, comments or overheard conversations immediately they occur. Relying simply on your memory will probably cause you to forget significant details.

Newspapers too – local and tabloid – contain lots of human-interest stories. Such stories provide starting points that you can adapt and develop. Try merging two or more of these stories together.

Ideas for getting conflict into your writing (which is essential for good stories) may also be suggested if you look in a dictionary of synonyms and antonyms.

Looking and listening

For screenwriting, it is valuable for the writer to be able to see the situations, characters and story development. It is more important to be able to visualise ideas as pictures rather than as well-written prose.

Screen stories are told through pictures, what characters say and how they behave. The words that are spoken will help to explain your plot and how they are said will help to reveal character. It is important to have a good ear for how people really talk, using living speech, selectively, to reveal character. Remember that sound effects and music can add appropriate atmosphere, as can silence. Behaviour, too, should reveal character. Character and its development are critical if audiences are to become involved in genuinely liking and caring for your principal characters and reacting appropriately to your negative ones.

Screenwriting is movie writing and movement is crucial for good scripting. Speech, characterisation and plot must all move, continuously, whether slowly or swiftly. Edit out anything that does not move your story forward or reveal something important about a character or situation.

Developing your story

Having decided what the story is about, what genre it is and where the story is set, write as detailed a description as you can of the place(s) where the action happens.

To really get to know and understand what motivates your characters, compile comprehensive, personal files about each of them; for example, their history, physical appearance (clothes, hairstyle, type of voice, face, etc.), age, personality, hopes, habits, how each reacts to others (and vice versa).

The theme of your story will identify the kind of principal character you should create. The main problem of your story is something that should deeply challenge the main character. Decide how your plot will end and create a character whose greatest concern is to achieve such an ending. Among the list of adjectives that you should draw up to describe your main character, the most distinctive quality should be the trait that will carry him or her through every difficulty to the satisfactory outcome of the story. Above all, the character must genuinely care about achieving the final outcome.

Summarise your story, first in a sentence or two (such as you might read in a TV Guide), and then in stages, to give it a structure.

This plot outline should then be broken down as a detailed scene-by-scene synopsis.

Film script structure

Typically, a film story will be structured around a beginning, middle and ending:

• Resume

Quickly introduce the main character and the problem that challenges him or her.

• Development

Develop the plot (and your principal character), building interest and suspense by complicating the character’s circumstances with two or three difficult and seemingly impossible problems (each building progressively and contributing eventually to the climax). Create a ‘point of no return’ for the principal character.

Intersperse the action with moments of comic relief.

Vary the pace and moods between individual scenes.

Juggle scenes so that they tell a well-sequenced story.

• Denouement

The principal character will develop significantly by confronting and discovering how to overcome the final conflict, which provides you with the climax and outcome of your story.

Sub-Plotting

Incorporating at least one sub-plot can develop your screenplay structure. Peopled by minor (and essential) characters, any sub-plot must influence the development of the main plot. Perhaps, for example, some behaviour of a minor character affects a crisis confronting a principal character?

Think of a sub-plot as background for the main story and, as in art, background should not be something separate from the main subject.

Television scripts are comparatively shorter than film scripts so less sub-plotting is possible.

Writing sitcom

The dossiers that you should compile for each character need to be as comprehensive as possible: be as detailed as you can about characters’ personal attributes, attitudes, hopes, habits, jobs, favourite foods, etc. The characters have to be attractive enough to make audiences want to meet them again week after week.

Sitcom writing usually begins with one or two ideas for scenes that you know will be funny. A laugh is needed at least every three speeches. These in turn can suggest an idea for another comic scene. Getting the final scene right at an early stage is most important and will help in ordering and linking together earlier scenes as they move towards the close.

‘One good rule of comedy’, advises comedy writer Graham Linehan, is that when ‘you’ve got a joke that is just a joke and doesn’t reveal something about the character or doesn’t help the plot along in some way, then you can probably chuck it out’.

Bring together a small number of contrasting characters. Comedians often use a ‘straight man’ off whom they can bounce jokes. Some characters act and some are ‘acted on’. Remember that comic characters do not consciously try to be funny; they are funny by mistake!

Comic characters do not have to talk like real people. But comic remarks or actions must do more than simply create laughter; they should reveal something about a character, develop the story or create a mood.

Keep speeches and camera shots short to give your script a suitably lively pace.

The sitcom plot structure is cyclical rather than linear. At the end, despite everything, nothing has changed and the characters remain the same as they were at the start.

Redrafting

Your initial attempt at writing any script should be considered as a first draft only. Rewriting your writing is how comic lines and scenes are made more entertaining, how dramatic scenes acquire greater impact, and how character and plot can be effectively polished and developed.

One of the scriptwriters of the ‘Father Ted’ sitcom observes: ‘A lot of people stop writing because they hand in short stories or whatever…that they’ve written just once…and people say "Well, it’s not very good; it’s silly" and they get discouraged and think "O, I’m not a writer." They may well be a writer: they’ve just got to go over it again…it’s only paper – and in the computer it’s not even paper – so you might as well just change it until it’s right.’

As well as viewing as many films/sitcoms as possible, if you have access to a video camera, start practising making short films of your writing – learning how to tell stories with pictures. Talk your friends into acting out parts for you. Hearing them reading your work aloud will soon reveal where your writing comes alive (or doesn’t!)

Technical details

It will help you to visualise how your story will work on screen if you know how to use some cinematic techniques. Although you do not have to use all of filmmaking’s detailed technical jargon, specifying whether scenes are INT. (interior) or EXT. (exterior), and indicating important camera angles – such as a close-up (CU) where facial expressions can be seen easily, medium shot (MS) showing a character from the waist up, or long shot (LS) which offers a wide view of the setting – will help to give you an idea of the basic look and feel of your work.

High-angle shots make characters look smaller and rather vulnerable whereas low-angle shots can convey an impression that the character is quite commanding or powerful.

Script length

With proper layout – Courier typeface, 12-pt font size and 1–1.5 inch margins around the page – one page will run for approximately one minute on screen. On average, a 60-minute script will have about 25-30 scenes.