Sunday 10 August 2008

golden age of screenwriting blogs?

As a new blogger embarking on my first feature length screenplay, I've spent some time recently reading screenwriting blogs. And I have to say I'm deeply impressed. There's an enormous amount of useful advice, analysis, information and goodwill out there - huge generosity and openness too. And now that TwelvePoint.com is online, with a host of articles, an imminent archive and a round up of weekly blog commentary, it's like a golden age of online support for screenwriters. Thank you bloggers, everywhere (blows kisses and tosses flowers into the blogosphere).
And now there's really no excuse but to get on with it, which is why I started this blog - to keep myself on track with writing projects and have one place to keep commentary and useful links.
I've been working my way through Philip Parker's 'The Art and Science of Screenwriting' in the last few days. Sometimes a particular book or resource is exactly the right one for the stage you're at with a piece of writing. Having progressed from short treatment to long treatment to a sort of step outline on post-its, through a long hiatus to an exciting breakthrough and some scene writing, I've realised I need to revisit my outline and make some fixes before I go any further. And working through Philip Parker's book with reference to my own screenplay has really helped at this stage. The way I connect with some of his points makes me realise too how much I actually learned by writing and being involved in the making of a ten minute film ('Feis' Screen South/UKFC). Observing the ins and outs of how your screenplay turns into a film is invaluable learning - and then it's useful to read the theory to clarify what you have learned. Sadly, none of this actually gets the next screenplay written.
More on this later. As I said. great stuff going on out there. I thought I'd let you know how it's appreciated.

2 comments:

Julie Gray said...

Hi Josie - thanks for listing The Rouge Wave on your blog roll :)

josie said...

It's a pleasure Julie.