S: Screenplay. (Dedicated to my Creative Writing instructor, Karen Press.)

for Creative Writing class each person in my class is assigned a topic and a date, and told to write about it on their blog. Today is my day, and my topic is "screenplays."

Before CreComm I had absolutely no idea how to write a screenplay. -- To be honest, I don't think I was overly interested in the technical aspect of screenplay writing because I assumed that I would one day write a book, and some poor screenwriter would do all the work to make it into a movie.

Ah so naive and foolish.

Now that I have had a little bit of experience, I must say that writing a screenplay is a lot more complex than it sounds; it's not only writing lines, or picking out songs for the soundtrack (that was seriously one the first things I always did when I wanted to write a movie...)

Nope.

Writing a screenplay is so much more detail oriented; you have to set up the scene, write and capture the 'emotion' of the characters. You have to explain so much, both verbally and visually, and you really don't have a lot of time to do it in.

Take any given show that you watch; there is always a main plot, and two sub-plots taking place during any one episode. Characters have to be established, and if they already are, then you have to write in a way that allows them to progress...

It's really rather technical.

I don't watch a lot of movies, but to end this post, I think I will leave you with a link to the screenplay from one of my all time favourite films; 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.' (It's a little different than the movie, but still so incredibly good!)

If you haven't seen the movie, go here to read the plot summary and synopsis.