: Re: Do screenwriters freewrite/outline directly in script mode? I'm trying to make the transition into screenplays, but it feels odd to start developing characters and setting just by letting them

@Hamaas631

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I haven't written a screen play myself, however I am a writer and I'm drawing on the experience of watching several friends write their plays over the past decade. That being said, here are some hopefully helpful thoughts.

There are clearly different styles, and ultimately you end up at pretty much the same destination. One of my friends starts out with the conceptual idea that the viewer has just a blank canvas that is gradually being painted into a vivid slice of life by the actions and words of the characters. He is someone who thinks of the core happenings almost like a secret that he is sharing a piece at a time, and it allows the audience/viewer to digest what he is providing as you go through. It builds a sense of intimacy.

Another friend of mine takes the approach of laying the table and telling you what you are going to be eating, before starting any sense. He is also a lot more of a structured person and needs to feel he knows where he stands, and where everyone else does, relative to what is going on in the world. Without a sense of distance and relationships between things (he's a 3D type of thinker) he can't visualize (as he writes) how people would act and how they would think.

Both of these friends go through the same refinement process, though pretty much in opposite directions.

For the fiction that I've been writing I found when I tried to take a highly structured approach (triggered by having a new writing app) after years of writing "off the cuff" I found I just couldn't write. I was stuck. It was like I'd taken everything out of the box, and now I didn't have that required joy of taking things out a piece at a time and marvelling at them.

As for normal, I think it comes to style. I would argue "get going and figure your style out." If you get blocked, stop, look at what's working and what you suspect isn't working and adjust.

Hope that helps,

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