November 17, 2010
New Writing Group
Category: writing groupsMet for the second time last night with a new writing group. These guys are dedicated screenwriters who’ve been pumping out screenplays for the past decade, and I count myself fortunate to be a part of their occasional meet-ups.
The topic du jour was thrillers. James is finishing one up and getting it ready to send out. Matt is researching his. And I am still getting my head around mine.
I found an early part of the discussion especially interesting. We were talking about pacing in an action oriented thriller, which is completely new to me. I’m a dialogue-heavy, comedy drama guy by nature. So how do you write a page of action that has no dialogue and make it work? James pointed out that he tends to focus on the action shot by shot, and breaks the copy apart to cue the reader appropriately. His point being that this approach enables the reader to see the story in a scene-by-scene, stop-action sort of way. If a potential director or producer is reading it, it helps them “see” the movie as they read it.
Great advice.
And after talking through what my story really wants to be, we decided it needed to be a near-future, sci-fi, eco-thriller. I can’t wait to write it.
There are no comments yet, add one below.