I had to ditch the production of Two Wrongs until further notice due to being hired for other people’s projects and since I have to feed my kids having to take those jobs my actual film projects are now in limbo. So you know I’m not gonna’ go one day without working on one of my little things so I thought this hiatus from filmmaking would be the perfect time to start writing again. I’ve come up with a whole Moleskin journal full of different ideas for new screenplays but have found that my labor of love, Epic, continues to keep coming up. As my entry a month or two ago, you know the story on Epic but I’ve since then read two books and polished up my new approach to writing. After reading one of them, I decided to start from scratch and take the Syd Field approach to creating or should I say re-evisioning my characters. Mr. Field’s theory is: You build your characters from their birth to time when the story takes place. The work is knowing everything about your characters then throwing in an inciting incident and having an ending to your screenplay and the script nearly writes itself, (figuratively speaking.) Since I already had characters, story, ending, plot points, I decided to do the exercise and it really did open up a fresh new take on my story nearly altering the first 20 pages of the story already. It really is a great new method of writing. (Granted it’s not new, but new to me.) Anybody who CAN write and is interested in writing a script I suggest you check the book out. It’s a very insightful tool and has really opened my mind to a script I really felt had escaped my creative process.
The book is Syd Field’s “SCREENPLAY” The Foundation of Screenwriting. Just from reading it, I’ve written a whole book of ideas and am getting to ready to embark on a whole new experience in writing.
Here are a couple of pages from my journal to give you an idea of my character building.
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