Methods and Styles of Script Writing

SCRIPT WRITING is the art of writing audio visuals in a universally accepted word format, even before starting to shoot (any form of audio visual media product). This art is more glorified for movies, however it is also used for other audio visual products such as TV serials, Ads, Documentaries etc.

Emergence of scriptwriting started way back in Greek cultures where theatrical drama was very predominant for regular entertainment of the royals. This was further amplified by Shakespeare. His famous plays ROMEO and JULIET, HAMLET and OTHELLO are considered to be work of masterpieces of all times which laid the foundation for today’s art of story writing. With the emergence of TV and films it was possible for entrepreneurs and film makers to make running audio visuals on films captured by camera and lighting technology and showed to the audience as a complete story or film.

Once this was made possible the next attempt was to make films of different styles incorporating the already known favourite stories. These were already known to people in the form of legends, plays and novels. Thus modern scriptwriting came into existence. With the emergence of modern technology and techniques it was possible to make films based on fiction which only one could imagine before. Bringing extra terrestrials and alien worlds to earthlings was now possible and was an instant success story. Thus genre started playing an important role in scriptwriting as choice was made available to the people and audiences’ choice started playing a major role in selection of movies to be made. Nonetheless the basic foundation of all films or audio visual remains the same..STORY TELLING..

Scriptwriting consists of three main components collectively

1.STORY (the whole story)
2.SCREENPLAY (story distributed in scenes by scene description)
3.DIALOGUES (the conversation in the scenes)

Stating these components in place one knows exactly where to begin from. A story can be adapted from a novel, an incident, a legend, a wild imagination, a personal experience or any source that can initiate excitement or probability of the audience. It starts with an idea or what we generally refer to as concept. The story idea or the main incidence which initiates or carries the story ahead is called as the plot.

Being a story telling medium it has got to go through the ups and downs of incidents, got to have obstacles, fights, wars, romance, evil and good people etc. So here we start giving them conventional technical names such as Characters is for people, type of story is genre and most importantly the happenings/incidents are scenes as it’s a running format.

Technically, scriptwriting is divided into three phases which the story comprises of called as the 3 ACT STRUCTURE..
ACT 1 – SET UP
ACT 2 – CONFRONTATION
ACT 3 – RESOLUTION

Act 1 consists of the conflict set up (30 mins). ACT 2 (60 mins) consists of the protagonist facing the problem and ACT 3 (30 mins) consists of the protagonist culminating the problem. Totally, 120 mins or 2 hrs.(there are many more minute details involved).

The writer should start of with a clear mind, acknowledging who the story is about, as the story has to be told in that perspective. Every story will have a start and an end, so the character should go through a series of incidents after which he will change as a person. The logic behind is that when a person goes through certain experiences in his/her life, he changes as a person. Simple references being educated people becoming gangsters, good and law abiding police officers becoming tainted etc. The duration of the story is limited but the span of time however can be moderated as per the story, revolving around a life time, few years, few months, one day etc. The character who the story is about is called the protagonist ,the villain or the person who plays the opposing character to the protagonist is called the antagonist. The fight of the protagonist in the story is called as the conflict. It is this conflict that gives the story more weight-age, more legitimacy, more endurance, as more severe the conflict more effort the protagonist has to put to win and more laudable is the effort WHICH DEFINES HEROISM !!

Sometimes there are stories which have the protagonist face more than one major conflict so there are multiple plots. Any such additional conflict that the story might have is called the sub plot or sub plots. This is the basic three act structure in brief. There are intense technicalities involved in Screen Writing which requires great effort and continuous writing to better oneself.
If the writer himself is the director then the screenplay might change in technicality. Here he goes an extra mile to enhance the camera angles and other pointers. At the end it all ultimately depends on technician to technician, project by project.