Screenwriting practice

[mindfuck]

Anyone else practice the screenwriting process some other way than just working on their current film ideas? I know it helps me to keep working on something even if I'm currently stuck on my main project. Personally, I either go back and re-work a certain area of my script or work on one of my "bullshit" projects.

My "bullshit" projects are little things that I never actually care about ending up on film someday, but still intrigue me enough to keep writing. For instance, as long as I can remember I would visualize the "movie version" of any book I was reading while I read it. The natural progression of this was to take the story and dialogue from a book I enjoyed and make a screenplay of it (yes, adapt it). I would do this just for the practice since I would never have to stop to worry about specific story content.

Anyone else do anything similar to keep their screenwriting up to par?

[ReelHotGames]

Adaptation is a big one for me. I have scripts for "Watchmen", "Good Omens", "Freaky Deaky", and "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban", "Carter beats the Devil" and "The Magician's Tale" that I have written while my brain stewed on originals. I find doing adaptations is a great challenge for making a tight script and seeing what works and what doesn't. This always keeps me going while I work on originals or get stalled, the great part of adaptatios as practice is that it's already written for you, so the challenges are going to be different than what you face in original writing, and I usually find that it stimulates me enough to get me back on track with my own writings.

[Jon]

I can't fully put myself into something if I know it'll never be fully realized by me.

(I mean I can't do something knowing it'll go nowhere.)

I have adapted a book before, though.

[ReelHotGames]

I can't fully put myself into something if I know it'll never be fully realized by me.

(I mean I can't do something knowing it'll go nowhere.)quote]

Knowing it won't go anywhere only means it never will

[polkablues]

Something I like to do is take a book or short story that I know wouldn't translate easily to film (James Joyce's "Ulysses" would be the ultimate example), and try to adapt it.  I'm midway through an adaptation of Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried", which is a very internal, episodic book with no real plot thread running through it, and it's turning into the most creative, original thing I've written.  A project like this forces you to think outside the boundaries of traditional narrative and film language, until hopefully you come up with new ways to tell a story.

[EL__SCORCHO]

Adaptation is a big one for me. I have scripts for "Watchmen", "Good Omens", "Freaky Deaky", and "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban", "Carter beats the Devil" and "The Magician's Tale" that I have written while my brain stewed on originals. I find doing adaptations is a great challenge for making a tight script and seeing what works and what doesn't. This always keeps me going while I work on originals or get stalled, the great part of adaptatios as practice is that it's already written for you, so the challenges are going to be different than what you face in original writing, and I usually find that it stimulates me enough to get me back on track with my own writings.

would you ever post one of those adaptations? I read "freaky deaky" and liked it a lot. I'd be really interested to see what you did with it.

[ReelHotGames]

Scorcho - I'd be happy to post at least some of, maybe 10 pages etc... So you get an idea, posting all of it would be a monster post, but I would be happy to email it to anyone who wanted to read.

I like my freaky deaky script, it is one of my better efforts (in my mind)

I have thought about shooting some scenes as an excersice basically.

[Jon]

Scorcho - I'd be happy to post at least some of, maybe 10 pages etc... So you get an idea, posting all of it would be a monster post, but I would be happy to email it to anyone who wanted to read.

I like my freaky deaky script, it is one of my better efforts (in my mind)

I have thought about shooting some scenes as an excersice basically.

I'd love to read one of yours. Please, if you will, email me it at Ganortsnoj@aol.com

[Ghostboy]

I'm with Jon; I just can't bring myself to write something PURELY for practice. My loss, possibly, but then everything I write is practice. I read a lot, and I always get excited when I can start envisioning a book as a film, and I start thinking about how I'd adapt it -- but I feel like putting it down on paper would take up time better spent on something else. Although I know Virgin Suicides and Rules Of Attraction were both written on spec, just because Sofia and Roger liked the respective books, and they both ended up making the films.

I have adapted Shakespeare before.

Carter Beats The Devil was one book I read recently that I'd love to adapt. Too bad Tom Cruise already has the rights to it.

[Tiff]

it's kind of redeeming to remake a situation in your real life and make it better, or more dramatic

it works when you're a self-centered, idealistic person that fucks up every situation you're in. very redeeming indeed