Written by: Kenn Fong
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Your First Script
You've just returned from wasting eight bucks at your local monsterplex watching some wretched incoherent mess and you're convinced you can do better. You've been watching movies all your life and you're certain you understand them.
You've read about the latest sale by Joe Eszterhas and you'd like to pick up some of that action. Now all you have to do is convince some gold-chain-wearing, cigar-chomping Hollywood executive and you can smash your alarm clock, quit your McJob, and move to Hawaii.
Not so fast, my friend. It's not as easy as it looks. No one sells their first script.
No one.
Before you get carried away with visions of dollar signs and sleek European cars, consider this. The average working professional screenwriter probably wrote more than a dozen specs* before earning his WGA card. Unless you're some kind of prodigy or your father owns the studio, get ready to do some work.
The first thing you should do is take your best idea, write it down, put it in a safe place and forget about it until you've written half a dozen others and halfway know what you're doing. Why? Because you can't run before you learn how to walk, and right now, you don't even know how to crawl. You don't want to use your very best idea as a learning experience. You don't want to spend your emotional energy on it because if you try to rewrite it later, when you know what you're doing, all the emotional energy, the juice which fueled the writing, will be gone.
Lew once asked one of his former students, now one of the industry's top professionals with half a dozen #1 box office winners, whatever became of some of the scripts he wrote in Lew's Graduate 434 classes. "I thought they were pretty good," Lew said. "Oh, I still have them around here somewhere in the basement." "Why don't you revisit them?" "Lew, those are my 'training wheel' scripts." Now that you're convinced that screenwriting is a craft and a profession which you respect and wish to learn, "what do I do now?" you ask.
Here are some things you can do right now, and I'll leave the order to you...
oPick one or two of your favorite movies, ones which you always want to see when they're on television. Rent or buy them. Sit and watch each one over and over. William Goldman says in his excellent, Adventures In The Screentrade, that you should look at a movie at least three times. The first time to enjoy it. The second time, you still like it, but now you're starting to see how it's put together. The third time you'll see the structure, how the plot works, how the conflict drives the characters, etc.
oRead a couple of books. Obviously, I recommend Lew's. But Lew himself recommends Robin Russin and William "Missouri\" Downs\\' book, Screenplay: Writing the Picture, and Richard Walter's Screenwriting: The Art, Craft and Business of Film and Television Writing.
http://www.wordplayer.com/, http://www.wordplayer.com/
oRead some scripts. There are some excellent scripts published in book form. You can also find a lot of scripts on the web. Download and print them out. (Beware, though, they're not spec scripts. Usually they're shooting scripts, which have camera angles and numbered scenes which you should not include in your own work. Try to find early drafts.)
oTake a class. There are many good teachers. Look for one who has some professional sales. If you can't find one, email Lew and ask him if he knows of anyone in your area. You might even get a chance to see him, when he comes to your town. James Dalessandro teaches in the San Francisco Bay Area. Lew\\'s got former students who teach all over the world!
oClick a few links. I've put some of the best screenwriting sites here on Lew's home page. Rossio & Elliot's Wordplay is a little advanced for the absolute beginner, but you should start reading it now. Alex Epstein's FAQ is an absolute necessity. Bookmark it.
Finally, visit us here on LewHunter.com from time to time. We're going to have a lot of useful information to help you on your way to a screenwriting career.

Write On!