What should a 14-year old do?
I am 14 years-old and am very interested in screenwriting. I have read numerous books on the subject. I have four questions:
- At 14 years-old, what else should I be doing besides reading
screenwriting books?
- What screenwriting software do you use and why?
- In your years of experience, do you find that your creative
vision makes it to the big screen, without being altered too much?
- How old were you when you wrote your first script? How old were you when your first script got purchased?
–Adam
Usually I answer one or two questions per reader, but I remember when I was fourteen I had a lot of questions, so I’ll make an exception.
First, at 14 years old you should be watching everything and everybody. I don’t mean movies. Watch people, try to figure them out, try to listen to the cadence and content of their speech. People are simply characters without a plot. They’re your best place to start. And no one thinks a 14-year old is paying attention, so they’re likely to let you watch and listen.
And of course you should write. But I wouldn’t get too hung up on writing a whole screenplay just yet. Write snippets. Write stories. Just write whatever you feel like.
Second, I use Final Draft for the Macintosh. I love it, but there are other good programs. And remember, a tool is only as good as the person using it.
Third, a screenwriter’s creative vision often does suffer on the way to the screen. A screenplay is a blueprint, and the actual movie that gets constructed may not live up to your highest hopes. I was thrilled with GO, but then I also produced, so I had a pretty big hand in how it would be done. Other projects haven’t always met my expectations, and it’s usually because choices were made that I wouldn’t have made. That’s the reality when you’re not the final voice on a movie.
Fourth, I was 22 when I wrote my first script. I wrote it in film school, and it was overwritten like most first scripts are. It’s never been produced, and honestly it never should be. But it got me started. The first script I was paid to write was HOW TO EAT FRIED WORMS, which is just now making it to the gate. The first original script I sold was GO.
When I look back to stuff I wrote when I was 14, I’m usually impressed by the vocabulary and horrified by the subject matter. I wrote about the stupidest things, most of them related to Dungeons & Dragons. But it’s important that I wrote those early things, because it gave me the confidence to make a living at it now.
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May 31st, 2005 at 1:34 pm
This is wonderful. I’m also a young visitor with an added complication by not being from a ‘first world’ (also known as back home film is: what film?) I really appreciate your blog as I’m learning things in an interesting manner. In fact, I did my assignment on ‘Go’. It must be weird that something you wrote once is being presented to a class! Thanks again, John.
June 1st, 2005 at 4:49 pm
What a coinkidink. I was just noticing HOW TO EAT FRIED WORMS on the Done Deal site yesterday, with a Bob Dolman listed as writer. It didn’t say it was a rewrite, but I knew it had been in the pipeline before.
RED
June 7th, 2005 at 3:46 pm
I also heard about “Fried Worms” being made, which is great! I grew up reading that and books similar to it. Way to go, John!!
June 8th, 2005 at 11:53 am
I also believe that the aspirings of today have a veritable plethora of resources and information on the internet.
I would also recommend a subsciption to Netflix and start watching some of the classics that are out there and studying how and why the stories and characters work.
I wish I had analyzed a little more film before i started writing 10 years ago.
February 5th, 2006 at 7:31 am
So let’s just say, as an example, that a 16-year old had already written four complete screenplays? Is he getting ahead of himself, or just being creepy?
February 14th, 2008 at 12:48 am
A slight tangent perhaps, but I think it’s relevant, especially to question 1.
One thing I get asked a lot by younger writers on my blog is which kind of screenwriting program should they study at college.
My answer is always a little controversial - I think you should never study screenwriting formally in your teens or early twenties.
I think you should use that precious time you are young and relatively free of commitment (financial and emotional) to really get out into the world and experience as many aspects of human life as you can.
I’ve been a story editor on many tv shows in the UK, and I always found myself preferring to deal with writers who had actually lived relatively tough lives but had worked in tough jobs, for real money, rather than those who had learned their craft but never actually done anything.
All the technique in the world won’t help you write anything worth reading if you have no understanding of how people tick - and the only way you get that is wide exposure to a lot of different sorts of people.
And if you can find a job that lets you observe people under pressure on a regular basis, like, say, being a porter in a hospital, being a trainee firefighter, police officer, well, in my book that’s a better writing education than any you’d get in school…