A few weeks ago I finished writing my 4th feature film. It was an animated film, and it’s a genre of film that I haven’t written an animated film before and boy was it tough! You’d think that as it is aimed at a younger audience, the material would be easier to write, but I found it to be the complete opposite. And as a result the write took way longer than I thought it would. But I preserved, and the reason being is that I know I have a unique idea. When I told it to others, it got their interest and they asked more questions. With the level of interest, it was a challenge to see whether I could put my unique ideas into well-formed compelling characters and plot.
When it came to writing I put too much pressure on the opening ten minutes. The first ten minutes of any film is there to hook the audience, get them to start connecting with plot and character. With an animated film, I think there is added pressure to make sure you’ve got a younger audiences attention straight away, otherwise you’ve lost them.
I also put a lot of pressure on trying to make the screenplay funny, and at some point in the process I made a decision to focus on getting the story on the page, and adding the humour in later.
So what now? I met several people at the London Screenwriters Festival who wanted to read the screenplay once it was complete. Now it’s time to test the waters and see if there still want to. I’ve already got one yes, and I’m hoping for a few more yes’s to get balanced feedback.
One of the areas which I am weak in is scene descriptions. I immediately think that the reader knows exactly what is happening on the page, but without much description to go on. .
Reading the screenplay there were a couple of plot hole areas that I need to solve. Simple ones like characters knowing other characters names before they’d even met or been introduced. A few more lines of dialogue would solve this.
The screenplay came in at 86 pages, and the usual for an animated film is 90 pages, so the good news is I have a few pages to play around with and hopefully inject some more humour. I’ve already got a few good ideas for extra scenes.
One of my new years resolutions is to do something with screenwriting everyday; whether it be writing or reading about screenwriting itself, or listening to related podcasts. Some days I fall behind but I catch up. I’ve read a great deal of really useful articles from Screencraft on their blog section about different elements of screenwriting, so I’ll use some of their techniques they suggest in the polish.
So now to spring clean my screenplay!
